Math through the ages....

[agallag]

Basic calculators are designed to do one operation at a time. It's up to the user to enter them in the correct order. Any calulator that supports DAL (direct algebraic logic is what casio calls it) would come out with the correct answer of 650. Don't they teach BEDMAS (brackets, exponents, division/multiplication, addition/subtraction) anymore?

[Strahd]

Originally posted by agallag
Basic calculators are designed to do one operation at a time. It's up to the user to enter them in the correct order. Any calulator that supports DAL (direct algebraic logic is what casio calls it) would come out with the correct answer of 650. Don't they teach BEDMAS (brackets, exponents, division/multiplication, addition/subtraction) anymore?

Ahhhhhhh. Bedmas. Those were the days. Skipping classes, trips to the principle's office, scraps with my stupid math teacher. Those were the good old days.


Actually as soon as Gurm posted bedmas was the first think that popped into my mind.

[Gurm]

Yeah, /me is a math geek.

- Gurm

[Dr Mordrid]

Slide rules? Hell....if you want speed use an abacus!!

When I went to school they taught us with those first.

Dr. Mordrid

[Jon P. Inghram]

If you're gonna use a calculator, at least use one with RPN.

[az]

RSN on a calculator?

AZ

[Wulfman]

http://www.hpmuseum.org/rpn.htm

I cannot use a normal calculator anymore since I got used to my HP 48G...

learning maths: no calculators for the first 6 years at school, then two years a basic calculator only during the lessons, not for the tests - since then it could be used anytime. the HP48 was only used (and suggested by the teacher) during year 11/12/(13).

mfg
wulfman

[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.

------------------

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

- Gurm

[Wombat]

Gurm,
I agree for most of this that calculators are unnecessary and a detriment to learning, but there are certainly times when I'm glad they were there. Mostly for matrix math and manipulation. Once you get the concepts down, it's just a tool, and a tedious one to do by hand.


Oh, and you should check again. 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.

[William]

Surely the whole point of lectures are to teach you how to do [insert mathematical topic of the day here], not how to punch numbers into a calculator. I.e. You would use a calculator if you actually wanted the answer, whereas what you want in your lecture is the working (IME anyway. Lecturers seem to get very unhappy when you just hand them an answer). I guess that means it's going in the right direction!

[Sasq]

Hey, Doc
Abacus are still legal here, but you need a licence to use one/teach how to use one - on a side note, my father-in-law has both and my wife has a licence to use one

Dan

[az]

???????

AZ

[Gurm]

Yeah, them freaky Japs.

- Gurm

[Beezer]

Originally posted by Gurm

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

- Gurm

I was thinking the same thing. The only time I ever used a calculator in high school was my senior year in my physics class. Got my hands on a TI 30 (with trig functions) for about $40. Man, it came in handy in that class.

[GNEP]

You need one in civil engineering lectures/tutorials.

Especially when you have been taught all you life in metric units and the bl**dy lecturer does all his examples in imperial units. Freak.

gnep