Staredit Network

You can do some math work on paper and get an A woohoo... you think people care after you graduate from schooling?

If you want to have the satisfaction of knowing that you can solve some stupid equation on paper that's fine, but when your working on a structural design or something and the other guy can figure out the mathematical statistics in 1/5 of the time using a calculator, who do you think your boss is going to view as more efficient? Yeah, it's all about time and efficiency in the business world. They could care less if your a math wiz even without a calculator (unless your some Math Professor).

My teacher understands that written work serves little meaning later on, she allows us to use our calculators on most things. With most trig equations it doesn't really matter because we use the calculator where we can, but there are things that a calculator cannot calculate, THIS is when you use your head.

I guess if your someone who must have the pride & satisfaction of knowing every little aspect of math even though there's no point to knowing it, sure, trash the calculator.

Calculators do help you get smarter in a way. When you enter the equation or the math problem in the calc, you get the answer...Now you can work backwards and find out how you got it.

Using a calculator for 13 + 64 is the problem though. Idiots get stuck on the street and have to solve 13 + 64. So they have to whip out their cell phones to get to the calculator(which takes forever).

Yeah, physics would be extremely time consuming without it, but you're not learning how to do the math functions, just plugging them in.


But most don't do that, if they're even using a calculator.

Calculators are very usefull in Calculus because the problems themselves can get quite lenghty and you will get to a point in which you no longer have variables, just 3 line's worth of numbers and operations that would take you 10 minutes to solve by hand.

Using calculators at advanced mathematic levels doesn't diminish the thinking process, it makes it more efficient because you can concentrate on integrating and derivating, instead of dividing and stuff.


Also, Calculator's define that humanity has more than enough knowledge to bypass all those simple operations at the advanced levels. Computers and Calculators help many engineers in making projects at faster speeds. It took us a whole bunch of thinking to make a tool that thinks all those arithmetic operations for us.

^ That's basically how I feel about it. In the middle of class, people take out their calculators when 100/100 turns up as the fraction at the end of some simple pile of crap...I find that disgusting. I do believe that they're very useful tools, but that the automation may just get worse later in life.

Picture 200 years from now, we have automatic farms, automatic workshops, automatic robotic diagnosers for problems on such things, etc...

And say, something goes wrong, no one has any idea what the hell happened, and we all die from laziness. ;P

Well i dont know about your schools, but i have a really good physics teacher so i understand the equations and how i get to it. That's why we have to show our work not just write down the answer, and write down which equation and the variables. If you didnt understand physics and you were given even a simple problem like,


How much heat is needed to bring 4kg of water at 0*C to steam at 125*C.

You couldn't solve it just by plugging into the calculator. You need to understand the physics behind it. You need to know the specific heat compacy of water/ice/steam, the temperature at which these substances freeze/vaporize, and the equation for temperature change, heat of fusion, and heat of vaporization.

I think the issue with mathematics teaching these days is that people are taught the process to do something, but not the reasoning behind the use of it. For example, I've had the quadratic formula memorized for going on three years now, but only recently did I learn that the formula is derived from the square completion formula, and this was through my own investigation. Most of the people in my algebra class are the kind who are easily thrown off, so it doesn't really come as a surprise.

With this in mind, calculators can be both a huge help and a disability. I try to do things without calculators whenever possible, to keep up in my indepdendence from it.

I use calculators all the time. I have more important things to think about.

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If it takes you longer to do a problem in your head than to use a calculator then use it.

If it would take you longer to use the calculator than solving it in your head, then do it yourself.

Thats not true for two reasons
1) It isn't as if we don't know how to farm.
2) Whoever created the machines can fix them.

1: after years we might be like DEH
2: what if machines created the farms? and those go wrong?
3: That was mostly sarcasm

Most people in my school have never heard of long division either. If someone is getting dumber from a calculator then its fine with me.

Without calculators, I would not know anything about what the hell this is:[codebox].list
#define equ .equ
#define EQU .equ
#define end .end
#include RPG.inc
.nolist
#define bcall(label) RST 28h \ .dw label

.org $9D93
.db $BB,$6D

bcall(_ThetaName)
bcall(_RclVarSym)
bcall(_ConvOP1)
dec a
jr z,alphaCur
dec a
jr z,alphaTextEn
dec a
jr z,alphaTextDe
dec a
jr z,shutdown
dec a
jr z,mem
dec a
jr z,done
dec a
jr z,setCon
dec a
jr z,runIndOff
dec a
jr z,runIndOn
dec a
jr z,invEn
dec a
jr z,invDe

ret

alphaCur:
res 5, (iy+12h)
set 4, (iy+12h)
set 6, (iy+12h)
ret

alphaTextEn:
set 3,(iy+$24)
ret

alphaTextDe:
res 3,(iy+$24)
ret

shutdown:
ld a, 01h
out (03h), a
halt
res 4, (iy+09h)
ret

mem:
bcall(_MemChk)
bcall(_SetXXXXOP2)
bcall(_OP2ToOP1)
bcall(_StoX)
ret

done:
bcall(_DispDone)
ret

setCon:
bcall(_RclX)
bcall(_ConvOP1)
or 0C0h
call setConLabel2
out (10h), a
ret

setConLabel2:
push af
inc hl
dec hl
pop af
ret

runIndOff:
bcall(_RunIndicOff)
ret
adc a, (hl)

runIndOn:
bcall(_RunIndicOn)
ret
ld c, l

invEn:
set 3, (iy+05h)
ret

invDe:
res 3, (iy+05h)
ret

.end
END[/codebox]z80 ASM, FTW!

Edit: oh n0ez! I just released the source code for that! Meh, its nothing special.

Saying calculators make us dumber is like saying cars make us fatter. It's not the object's fault that you abuse, misuse, overuse it.

Besides, if you need a calculator for addition and single-digit multiplication, I don't think it can make you any more dumb.