Calculator Stories

Posted by khalling 9 years, 10 months ago to Culture
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ok, I have one for ya... an engineering friend was on his way to work. In the middle of the road, he noticed a calculator case. typical TI scientific calculator size (mid 80s). He stops, picks it up. Hoping to find a calculator. Instead it is perfectly stuffed with 10k in small bills. He sweats all day at work and comes home to an engineer and a working waitress english major. the bills are pulled and and counted. the word "shit" is flown around like no one has ever heard.....I am not telling the rest of the story. but...what's your calculator story?

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  • Posted by jconne 9 years, 10 months ago
    @circuitguy / you need to be asked - inituative to whom? I have taught both contexts and my students have gotten both, but a new paradigm takes habituation time. My teaching context is computer architectures in the '60s and '70s. And then there's people who think Lisp is the best programming language.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Those big old calculators my dad sold were RPN... iirc. You had to enter the first and second number, then the operation (like, "4" "5" "+").

    He had a heckuva time adjusting to use my pocket calculator :)
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  • Posted by johnpe1 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Rob, this was ~34 years ago, as a new vet school
    was just getting started. I have no recent data, but
    the memory of her honest appraisal is still fresh. -- j

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  • Posted by Frediano 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I just checked. I paid $199 in 2011 to replace HP15C with re-issue, NIB with manual, on Amazon. Today, price is $499. At 4oz, that is $125/oz(sorry, did that in my head). Silver is trading around $21/oz.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    At Poly we lost 1/3 each freshman year from the school of engineering. It was a brutal program. I arrived a boy and left a man.
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  • Posted by Frediano 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    My HP15c is actually a recent replacement-- the 'Limited Edition' re-issue. My original HP15c was the only thing stolen out of my bag at the airport in Dhaka (Zia) on a trip back from Bangladesh in 1998. Might be a poor nation, but they knew what was worth stealing.
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  • Posted by Frediano 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The Apollo computers still had wired cores. The work at Fairchild in the late 60s that eventually showed up at Intel as the 4004 didn't quite make it into Apollo, though miniaturization of electronics for flight was certainly an impetus for that..
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  • Posted by HuckFinn 9 years, 10 months ago
    I still have my 1981 HP 15C and 6 HP 32SIIs and I use them every day. I keep RPN calculators all over my house, lab and office so I don't have to carry one around, misplace it, or worse yet, drop it. RPN is so logical compared arithmetic entry and Excel is like math designed by Obama. I don't trust any complex formula in Excel, especially trig, until I have verified it on an HP calculator. Trig in three dimensions? I do it on HP unless the calcs are voluminous and it's worth the time & screaming at Bill Gates to set up Excel to do it. Long live RPN!
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  • Posted by johnpe1 9 years, 10 months ago
    my first calculator was a Bowmar MX100 Scientific
    Brain;; it cost $135 and I had to drive to Memphis
    to buy it. I used it for years, and even carried it
    for a spare to my PE test. 3 slide rules, 3 calculators,
    and spare batteries. a suitcase full of books. pens
    and pencils and scaled rulers and everything but
    a pocket protector.

    the Bowmar was forwarded to a high school kid
    and lasted 10 years.

    today I use an hp 41cx which I bought for my first
    wife when she tried computer science in '82.
    tough machine. it winked out once (N batteries)
    when I was negotiating the purchase of 20 acres
    of land, and the "opposition" brought out a light-
    powered thing which came in a cracker jack box
    to finish up. embarrassed??? -- j

    http://www.computerhistory.org/collectio...
    http://www.amazon.com/HP-41CX/dp/B004BNR...

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  • Posted by Technocracy 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    LOL

    I agree with your attitude on Excel.

    I have to use it all the time, but I don't care for it. Or any of the MS-Office apps for that matter. Unfortunately that is what most of the work world uses. So of course your output has to be readable for that suite or be a pdf.

    MS-Office has always been "adequate" for work but not a single one of the components has ever been best in class. Good enough, but not great.

    I still spot check excel sheet with my HP calc as well. And installed some HP calc emulators on my ipad for nostalgia's sake as well as usability.
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  • Posted by Technocracy 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    More tradition indeed.

    AF didn't exist until the key west accords.
    At that point they became independent and had to start their own traditions. All the Army traditions became part of the "competition". And therefore, never to be mentioned LOL
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I hope that's not the case anymore as my daughter has a friend that's just now applying to get into a Vet program. It's amazing how some guys use their positions of power to take advantage (and how some gals use what they've got to wrangle advantage, too).
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  • Posted by johnpe1 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    my first wife found that, despite her extraordinary
    grades in her vet school prep curriculum, she was
    unqualified because she didn't have round heels. -- j

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  • Posted by BambiB 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Given that the purpose of the test is to gauge mastery of course material, the problem with programmable calculators is two-fold.

    The first, major, problem, is that unless the person doing the programming is the one taking the test, they've demonstrated only the ability to run software and no understanding of the course material. So if they put the numbers in and get an answer that is 5 orders of magnitude off, they have no clue what went wrong, nor even that anything IS wrong. Entering numbers into a keyboard doesn't demonstrate a knowledge of the underlying concepts - so the test is invalidated.

    The second argument is that using the programmability essentially amounts to turning the test into a "take home" test. If programming is part of the skill set, then no problem. If not, it amounts to an artificial advantage for those who may have knowledge unrelated to the course material. In effect, if you spent two hours programming your calculator, and everyone gets one hour to take the test, your pre-programming means you have a sizable time advantage.

    In general, I believe that learning to do something "by hand" before permitting calculators (or hand computers) is the way to go. That way, when your calculations show that you need 5 million feet of lumber to build a set of shelves, you at least have a clue something might be wrong.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yet the vet schools allow a very limited amount of students so as to ensure that there aren't "too many" in the profession that they provide too much competition to the existing vets.
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  • Posted by $ Snezzy 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Restrictive? I'm willing to spend ten minutes coaching a youngster on how to apply to vet school, but I'm not going to waste my effort on losers. My 6x9 quiz identifies those who are far enough along in mathematics that they'll be able to handle calculus by 11th grade or earlier. I'm restricting nothing. Instead I'm offering (to borrow a phrase from horsemanship) a leg up, when possible. It's not available to those who think the horse is too tall.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I think the longest sentence I could spell on my calculator that way would be considered dirty today...

    SHELLOIL
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I agree with you about the importance of memorization. Speaking of my father, he used to tell us kids how when *he* was in school they had to spend hours reciting their multiplication tables.

    Yet the guy could multiply two, 3-digit numbers as fast, and in some cases faster, than I could enter them on a calculator...
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The notion of a stack with the operation done on the item(s) at the top of the stack is more intuitive than a standard calculator where you enter the operation after entering the value only if the operation has one argument, e.g. sqrt.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I'm American going back three generations. I know nothing about Harry Potter, but I think I might be learning soon b/c of my kids' ages.

    The winter holidays for me are the Solstice, Christmas, and all the other ones that get shoehorned in around that time of year. We only celebrate the Solstice and Christmas.
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  • Posted by $ Snezzy 9 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Holy Crumoly. When coaching kids who tell me they want to be veterinarians, the first thing I ask them is, "What's 6x9?" If they can't get it instantly, I figure there's no hope for them getting into vet school, so I tell them to prepare for some other career, "just in case" they don't make vet school.

    Some of them, failing the 6x9, will say, "I'll use a calculator." I say, "Not for MY horse you won't!"

    If you calculate the horse to get 30 ml of reserpine when 3 ml is required, the incorrect dose may kill the horse. There is no antidote.

    I want my horse's vet to have a good sense of the numbers in dosing meds, and that means relying on the brain in addition to calculators or computers.

    I'm awfully tempted to start a "remedial math for geniuses" class. We'll learn casting out nines, hand-calculation of square roots, calculating areas of fields by walking "Roman paces" to gather distances. There is so much one can learn, and I know such a small amount!
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