Possible death of calculators in education?

[EugeneNine]

(05-23-2017 04:39 AM)Dan Wrote:  

(05-22-2017 07:06 PM)c785 Wrote:  This is also why I mention slide rules so often: even if it gives you the mantissa of a product of two numbers reliably, you still have to think to work out the exponent (order of magnitude), and even that simple task will make you THINK and be much less likely to make errors.

Love it. Teachers who used them in school have said the same thing, gives you a feel for numbers. I bought a "Sun Hemmi" slide rule a few years ago. Ingenious devices and exquisite craftsmanship.

(05-23-2017 12:57 AM)JimP Wrote:  Spell checkers are for people who know how to spell, not for those who don't. One doesn't want to be lead [sic] down the wrong path!

A colleague gave a similar reply to an English teacher who thought students don't need to know arithmetic, calculators do it all for you. She didn't know what to say.

Years ago the spell checker helped me learn to correctly spell a lot of words, however the modern version of spell check as you type tends to derail the train of thought and when I stop to make corrections I forget what the rest of the sentence was about. So there is good and bad to it.

Similar, the HP solver on my 48SX taught me a lot of math that the school refused to.