That wasn’t so much a “fact” told in school as it was a prediction, and it was true for them. Some people carried pocket calculators, but most people didn’t. Some supermarkets has calculators built into their carts, but most didn’t.
Failing to predict society’s norms in 20 years isn’t the same as teaching a false fact.
Tiny photocell powered calculators used to be everywhere. There were “thin” ones to fit in your Costanza sized wallet, Mousepads with them built in, and my wristwatch in 6th grade had one with tiny rubber keys.
Literacy, sure. Like I can see say a formula for a median, or how to plot a simple linear regression, but I cannot actually do that math myself on paper without fucking it up. The more steps the worse it gets. I might genuinely have dyscalculia or something idk.
With a calculator though? No problem. Never any issues with doing budgeting or some basic statistics. If anything I’m kind of known as the math-sy one amongst my peers just because I know a bit more than an average person about statistics due to my interest in economics and politics, and a little bit about electricity from my hobby in electronics with breadboards and shit.
Heck I remember writing a calculator app for my mobile app dev class in my compsci bsc and one time testing it while hunting for a weird bug, a result looked wrong, but as it turns out it was actually me that was wrong, and the result was right.
In my cybersec MSc I got really fucked by them inexplicably making us do IP address calculations in binary, but then I can also count on my fingers in binary, and made a full adder circuit once.
Tomorrow I’ll be calculating memory offsets to practice buffer overflows, but I still don’t even know most of the multiplication table, and subtracting or adding double digit numbers takes me a minute in my head.
“You need to learn this because you won’t always have a calculator on you!”
That wasn’t so much a “fact” told in school as it was a prediction, and it was true for them. Some people carried pocket calculators, but most people didn’t. Some supermarkets has calculators built into their carts, but most didn’t.
Failing to predict society’s norms in 20 years isn’t the same as teaching a false fact.
wat
Tiny photocell powered calculators used to be everywhere. There were “thin” ones to fit in your Costanza sized wallet, Mousepads with them built in, and my wristwatch in 6th grade had one with tiny rubber keys.
It was a magical time till be alive. 5318008
Yep, back in the 90s they were in some places. My local supermarket had one like this, except without the annoying ad on the left side.
The same was told to me even as everybody already had mobile phones with calculators in them or even iPhones
Basic mathematical literacy is a prerequisite to being able to use a calculator.
Literacy, sure. Like I can see say a formula for a median, or how to plot a simple linear regression, but I cannot actually do that math myself on paper without fucking it up. The more steps the worse it gets. I might genuinely have dyscalculia or something idk.
With a calculator though? No problem. Never any issues with doing budgeting or some basic statistics. If anything I’m kind of known as the math-sy one amongst my peers just because I know a bit more than an average person about statistics due to my interest in economics and politics, and a little bit about electricity from my hobby in electronics with breadboards and shit.
Heck I remember writing a calculator app for my mobile app dev class in my compsci bsc and one time testing it while hunting for a weird bug, a result looked wrong, but as it turns out it was actually me that was wrong, and the result was right.
In my cybersec MSc I got really fucked by them inexplicably making us do IP address calculations in binary, but then I can also count on my fingers in binary, and made a full adder circuit once.
Tomorrow I’ll be calculating memory offsets to practice buffer overflows, but I still don’t even know most of the multiplication table, and subtracting or adding double digit numbers takes me a minute in my head.
I feel have super power by being to calculate accurate tips without needing to crack out my phone.
Yeah but its such a hassle to find, so…