Calculator Wars at your School

[Steve Simpkin]

(06-22-2022 06:14 AM)Garth Wilson Wrote:  

(06-22-2022 04:31 AM)RichieHH Wrote:  I'm wondering if you're joking here. There's a reason slide rules were replaced. A slide rule user won't come close to a decent sci calc user in terms of speed or accuracy. Nice idea, but somewhat hazed by romantic notion?

Maybe someday I'll be in a position to make videos to demonstrate. The slide rule is quick, if you're skilled. However, every video demonstration I've seen shows that the operator didn't know how to quickly get a vernier effect with the fingers to home in on super accurate settings of the slide or even the cursor. I am out of practice now, but I stand by what I said. When I was using it all the time, I really could get answers just about as quickly as I could with a calculator. It doesn't take any skill or much understanding to punch buttons though, which was a major attraction for the calculator.

The instructor mentioned since this was a 101 elementary electronics class that he also taught students how to use a slide rule so much of that 40 minute time may have been spent assisting students with using their slide rules on the problem. These were also fairly complex problems involving multi-step formulas and R->P conversions. The excerpt below (from the HP-27 Owner's Handbook) shows an example of calculating the AC impedance on a simple resistor-inductor-capacitor circuit. If memory serves, the problems had a number of these circuits in parallel and we also had to calculate the voltage and currents across some of the components. There were a *lot* of calculation steps involved and it was complex even using a calculator to do it.