Re: Calculators
I was at that age in school where the transition from slide rules & log tables was made to electronic calculators. They were banned at first, but then gradually accepted as their cost went down and availability increased. What struck me at the time, even as a child, was the rush to accept them as the ultimate truth, without any consideration for accuracy. And by accuracy, I mean the ability of the user to operate the thing correctly, and paying heed to a result that looks a little suspicious. How many miles in 346 kilometres? - click, click, click, writes down 5536. No alarm bells ringing that the calculation might be backwards, or the decimal point is having a day off? One of the greatest skills I learned as school was the ability to make a rough, ball park approximation to the answer, before totally trusting a calculator.