Math through the ages....

[Technoid]

Maybe I should have explained the math example I gave….
(All these is done on a Stupid “one calculation at a time" calculator)
Co-worker finds item he wants to sell in store.
The in price is 1000 units.
So he decides that the profit should be 500 units.

And to see if the price will be to steep he does the following calculation:
1000*1,25 (our local sales tax, and then he ads the profit) +500 that gives him a price of 1750units
But when he has to punch it into our computer system he has to remove the sales tax (the 25%)
So he does the calculation 1750*0.80= 1400 and punches that into the system.
The computer then sees that our profit margin is 400 units, he doesn’t!
But it took me forever to make him understand that profit has to be added to the in price before tax!

[RichL]

Originally posted by Wombat
I've had a TI-85 for over 7 years now, and it understands complex numbers just fine, and can even solve sets of equations and take roots where the answers may be complex.
The TI-89 came out while I was in college, and it's scary, since it even handles indefinite integrals and partial differentials. There was about a gap year between when the calculator came out and schools/standardized tests knew to ban it.

I had Texas Instruments calculators when I was in school & at college. They were great machines, but the absolute best thing about them was the case they came in.
Stiff plastic of just the right size to fit a plam sized cheat sheet in underneath the calculator where the tutor couldnt see it on casual inspection

The irony is, I usually took so much care compsing the cheat sheet that by the time I got in the exam I didnt need it anyway!

[Wulfman]

Originally posted by Gurm
Wulfman,

What were you doing in 11th and 12th grade that required a calculator? Let me try to recall my math in school.

Grade 6: Pre-algebra. Certainly no calculator needed for that.

Grade 7: Algebra 1. All variables and factoring. No calculator required.

Grade 8: Geometry. Theorems, postulates, and no calculators (no NUMBERS).

Grade 9: Algebra 2/Trigonometry. MAYBE you need a calculator - if your teacher is an idiot who forces you to write out logarithms and cosines longhand. I'm sorry, but cos(43') is a much better answer than... good god, whatever the actual number is.

Grade 10: Precalculus & Basic Analytic Geometry. I suppose someone could make a case for a calculator... again, if the teacher uses lousy problems out of the book and forces you to work them out to the nth place, but it's not particularly SENSIBLE. My teacher never required it. Of course, he had his PhD from Oxford, so his math teaching was pretty high-end, I guess. We couldn't complete the course without being able to graph ANY POLYNOMIAL EQUATION HE GAVE US in under 1 minute, on the blackboard, in front of the class.

Grade 11: Calculus BC (i.e. College Calc 1-3). Again, the only time you need a calculator to do this is if your teacher is an ASS who forces you to do out the approximations in the first half of the first semester of calculus. After that, it's useless again. I call Calculus "fun with numbers", since you just magically move numbers around. It's fun!

Grade 12: Vector Calculus (College Calc. 4-5) & Linear Algebra. Again, no calculator needed. I have no idea how you would even begin to go about asking a calculator to find the tangential (n-1) dimensional construct to an n-dimensional construct.

Freshman College Quarter 1: College Calculus 6. More advanced calculus theory. Nothing to "compute" here.

Freshman College Quarter 2: Differential Equations & Functions of a Complex Variable. NO idea how you'd use a calculator, since last time I checked none of them are willing to compute the square root of negative numbers.

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Now, PHYSICS... there I could see using a calculator.

- Gurm

it seems as if you have posted the american curriculum.

since grade 8 I've attended a somehow more technical oriented school - yes, our school system offers some unique posibilites...

mathematics was therefor less limited to the theory and was entitled "applied mathematic(s?)".

of course, you don't need (and we were not allowed to use) a calculator to deal with a lot of problems, but in the end you usually wanted numbers (statistics/probability for example).

we discussed these topics with the teacher: when we were using a calculator, he gave us more exercises to solve in the same time...

the final exam in maths during my "matura" (compareable to the end of highschool?) was combined with chemistry / chemical engineering / process engineering and lasted about 5 hours. believe me, you don't want to do that without a calculator.

mfg
wulfman

[GT98]

All I have to ask is where the hell am I gonna use that Stuff in the Real World?

I suck majorly at Math (and Spelling if you haven't notice)

[RichL]

Originally posted by GT98
All I have to ask is where the hell am I gonna use that Stuff in the Real World?

In my experience, unless you work in a research lab, you don't. You have a calculator or a computer program that does it for you

[Dr Mordrid]

Physics....yup, need a major calculator or the computer equivalent. Especially if you're doing a lot of radiation physics. Calculating theraputic doses any other way can give you a massive headache

As far as the square root of a negative number goes you can't solve it directly using any calculator I know of.

The workaround is to calculate the sq. rt. of its positive equivalent and express the result as the real number n * i. i = the complex field assigned to the sq. rt. of -1.

Square root of 9 = 3
Square root of -9 = 3i

i = square root of -1
ii = -1
iii = (-1)(square root of -1)
iiii = (-1)(-1), or 1

Dr. Mordrid

[KRSESQ]

You lost me at the bakery, Doc.

Kevin