Slashdot Mirror
The Sliderule As Paleo-Geek Artifact
hwestiii writes: "Geek identification methods have waxed and waned over the years. Back in the years when it was still not cool to be a geek, they were identified by their pocket protectors and calculators hanging from their belts. And way back in the mists of time, before most of the Slashdot crowd were even an item on their parent's life-project-plan, they were identified by possession of ... slide rules. I'm clearly dating myself by submitting this, but I owned and used slide rules as a teen, just as microelectronics was making cheap calculators possible. Nando times has an interesting link to a community of people around the country trying to keep the memory and spirit of the slide rule alive. Some may be wistful, some may think 'What the hell...?' Take a look." A quick look at Google's image search yielded some cool photos of both slide rules and the classic HP-35 calculator -- I wonder where the HP-35 my dad used to use has gotten to. Does anyone still use slide rules on a regular basis?
If California's energy crisis turns computers into pricey paperweights and makes AA batteries as scarce as vacuum tubes, Tom Wyman will still be able to perform vital calculations such as finding the square root of 144 or figuring the value of 2 to the power of 10.
Are American's today really so uneducated that they can't find the square root of 144, or the value of 2^10 without using a calculator?
Apparently the author thinks these are otherwise unsolveable mathematical mysteries... I sincerely hope he's not representative of the average man.
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I can't be the *only* one posting to slashdot from a Kueffel & Esser Duplex 4080-3 rule, can I?
Cheers,
Jim
MMDC Mobile Media
-- My Weblog.
It was an integral part of my costume, second only to the printed circuit board motif. See sexiestgeekalive.com or go straight to the picture and explanation.
This is an indication of a much larger problem we have with eduction in America. We are taught to USE things, not to UNDERSTAND things. In my NOT so humble opinion computers have no place in education before graduate school, unless they are taught as a subject in and of themselves, not as a substitute for thinking. In this I count TI and HP calculators as computers, how be it small and not really general purpose computers.
I am of this opinion for the simple reason that I have fallen into that trap. I did not have any experience of any note with computers before college, except for one programming class in high school where we used rather pathetic machines at school to work. We had no computer at home except a dedicated purpose word processor. My calculator was not capable of symbolic integration or any of the other nifty tricks that the 89 and 92 are capable of. EVEN SO, the calculator could do logs, roots, and other things that I still have no good intutitive feel for. We need to be less concerned with speed in our teaching and mroe concerned with quality. Basic principles and techniques that have been really learned, not just memorized for a test and forgotten, will be of far more use than quickly picking up a broad survey of concepts.
Students, most of them, don't really want to work hard. It's just not fun. That's where teachers and yes PARENTS need to impose a little disicipline. Not too much, because then it is only the threat of the whip which drives the kid and as soon as the whip is gone (college) the effort goes too. But external disicipline is extremely important in the early years. Just be sure that real learning takes place, and real benefits occur. And show the kid what these benefits are. Don't just say "It'll be of use to you in the future." That's fine for you, but a young kid has no concept of his future. He doesn't see the impact of the past on his present, because he hasn't had enought experience to note cause and effect in his own personal life. Show him/her what they've learned, be excited about it, and if they ask what good it is TELL them. Explain to them about the importance of understanding what's going on around you. Explain to them what science, engineering, and other mathematical endevours mean to their future. Don't assume they won't understand. Just be patient, don't underestimate them, and don't overestimate them. Encourage questions. Never belittle a child or scold him for asking a quetion again and again - if he/she really doesn't understand, you WANT them to keep asking rather than surrender to ignorance.
There is a stigma in American society that if you don't advance a grade each year, you are stupid and behind. Behind in what way? I'd say if you falsly promote a student up a grade they'll be behind all their life, not just a year. Yes, social pressures can be cruel. I've lived through being the oddball and nerdy one all my life, and been shunned and made fun of. But you at least learn when to listen to people and when not to. A useful trick, when you deal with hostile people out in the real world.
Actually, I dislike the use of the phrase "the real world" when applied to the world outside school. For a child, the school world can be horribly real. They are trapped there. All too often, real work ethic is ridiculed, and they get mixed messages from all sides. Parents are essential to provide a clear signal, but even they can do nothing when a student is on the playground being shunned.
I am becoming a huge supporter of home schooling. Have activities where childern interact with each other, but keep learning between the parent and child. Both people involved are thus committed to what needs to be done, and the child can work at his/her pace, whether or not that is faster or slower than average. Also, the parent can then make sure that real understanding and absorption are taking placce, not just memorizing.
And also at home, you can keep them free of electronic aids. I have no problem with computers being TAUGHT in education, but I have a big problem with them being USED in education. If schools want to teach computers, they should teach what makes them work, the history of computers, programming languages, and other basics. If they want to teach how to use computers, I have to pieces of advice. Do not teach any math, spelling or other "educational tool" software until college at the earliest, and do not teach just one system. Teach them to be flexible computer users. Explain how a computer virus works, why they need to worry about them, and how to think about security. Teach them the difference between OS and application, and introduce them to all kinds of both. Hard, you'd better believe it. But very much worthwhile.
I would dearly love to see slide rules come back as a tool in teaching. An intuitive understanding of the world is where fundamental breakthroughs come from. It's also a great source of pride and confidence. Slide rules help build intuition, because the user is involved with the process of solveing. A calculator has none of that.
It is probably too late for me - I doubt I will ever develop the intuitive grasp of the world that the great scientists of old had. Indeed, I seriously doubt most people who have let machines do any significant part of their thinking will. Has anyone noticed how large the precentage of foreign nationals is in our highest education setting, graduate school? So few Americans are there. We just don't have the interest, or the intuition, or the training to want to do it. We pride ourselves on being advanced, but the people responsible for so many of those advances used so many simple tools to learn, REALLY learn, the basics. No computers, no calculators. Pencil and paper, and maybe a slide rule. Basics students don't need more than three sig figs - they are learning BASICS.
Pardon the rant. But this is a serious problem. I think home schooling may become more and more the way to really teach students. Make learning a life long excitement, not something to finish and then do something else. We push too hard, too fast. We burn out. I know what that is too. We need to question both our means, and our ends. I pray that someday we will.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
We use a tool called an E6B, invented originally (I think) by the army, which has a circular slide rule on one side of it.
The circular slide rule is pre-marked with conversions that are interested to pilots, such as gallons/gas->pounds and gallons/oil->pounds, and it it frequently used (in flight, with one hand) for computing distance covered.
There's a tons of other conversions, and of course, you can do any other mathematical operation that a slide rule can do.
Aviators are the only people I know who still use these slide rules -- but every student pilot where I flew was issued one and had to use it for the examinations.
Mumbly Joe
There's this cool chapter in the book "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" in which the Nobel-laureate physicist Richard Feynman describes how he could calculate all kinds of complicated expressions in his head, simply by being very familiar with log tables and basic arithmetic. Unfortunately, in the calculator age this skill has been lost.
Example: Someone asks Feynman to calculate e to the power 3.3, and then to the 3:
"I happened to know three numbers -- the logarithm of 10 to the base e ... which is 2.3026 (so I knew that e to the 2.3 is very close to 10), and ... I knew the log of 2 to the base e, which is .69315 (so I also knew that e to the 0.7 is nearly equal to 2). I also knew e (to the 1), which is 2.71828. The first number they gave me was e to the 3.3, which is e to the 2.3 -- ten -- times e, or 27.18. I knew I couldn't do another one; that was sheer luck. But then the guy said e to the 3, that's e to the 2.3 times e to the .7, or 10 times 2. So I knew it was 20.something, and when they were worrying how I did it, I adjusted for the .693."
This is covered by fair use, I hope. But seriously - go get the book. It's an excellent read.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
There's a great scene in Apollo 13 where a group at mission control frantically works with slide rules to calculate information before a computer on the ship is shut off. Going down the row seeing them raise their thumbs and say "checks out, flight" is one of the better scenes in the movie.