Blimey! Maths homework!

[Poacher]

I had completely forgotten about Standard Form. This thread has just given me a blast of nostalgia even though I did get a D grade at A level maths.

Anybody care for a spot of Reverse Polish notation? Splendid!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation

More nostalgia: does anyone here remember a slightly irreverent computing journal in the 70s which had the adventures of Superanalyst? One of the regular characters was Socksov, the reverse polish operator.

 

[Retribution03]

Open your phone's calculator and turn your phone on its side...boom one scientific calculator ...which I have no idea how to use lol

 

[snorri]

Have you still got your Log Orithm Book?

Yes I have, hasn't been used since '62 and would have been thrown out years ago if it wasn't for the fact a certain had signed the flyleaf.
There are few happy memories associated with school, but I make an exception for her.

 

[BigAl68]

I was given I think ti33 with red LED by my father an aeronautical engineer which I thought was very cool at the time until we were told we couldn't use them in class. And I remember burning my old log books when I finished my o levels as I hated them.

 

[jefmcg]

I was on the cusp. We got taught logarithms, and sat tests on using them, but never applied the knowledge. Calculators took over. It concerned my father, "what if you don't have a calculator?" he asked; "what if I don't have log tables?" I countered.

Oh, and trig tables. Forgot about them. I might look up some trigonometry problems: it's been so long, I can't really remember the application of them. I can remember SOH, CAH, TOA - bloody hell, that burbled up from somewhere deep.

 

[TVC]

So, from this collective nostalgia from the middle aged brigade, can we conclude that our advice to @Sara_H is get your kids to do their own bloody homework?

 

[ColinJ]

BODMAS!

 

[slowmotion]

I was on the cusp. We got taught logarithms, and sat tests on using them, but never applied the knowledge. Calculators took over. It concerned my father, "what if you don't have a calculator?" he asked; "what if I don't have log tables?" I countered.

Oh, and trig tables. Forgot about them. I might look up some trigonometry problems: it's been so long, I can't really remember the application of them. I can remember SOH, CAH, TOA - bloody hell, that burbled up from somewhere deep.

You were lucky! We had to use fractions!

 

[ColinJ]

So, from this collective nostalgia from the middle aged brigade, can we conclude that our advice to @Sara_H is get your kids to do their own bloody homework?

I had a heated debate with my sister about her kids' homework. I said I would spend hours helping them understand how to do it, but I would not do it for them!

My parents left the choice of school to me. I chose my own subjects. I did my own homework.

Oh, and I walked to school, or rode there on my bike, or caught the bus. No lifts!

 

[TVC]

I was on the cusp. We got taught logarithms, and sat tests on using them, but never applied the knowledge. Calculators took over. It concerned my father, "what if you don't have a calculator?" he asked; "what if I don't have log tables?" I countered.

Oh, and trig tables. Forgot about them. I might look up some trigonometry problems: it's been so long, I can't really remember the application of them. I can remember SOH, CAH, TOA - bloody hell, that burbled up from somewhere deep.

Ooh sohcahtoa. I still use that. However, if you told the 13 year old me that I would be sitting here typing this on a 7" touch screen, without wires, whilst a tv 40" wide and 1/2" thick played in the background I would have exploded. And don't get me started on the availability of free high quality pornography, the 13 year old me would vanish up my own infinity.

 

[ColinJ]

How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!

 

[jefmcg]

Ooh sohcahtoa. I still use that. However, if you told the 13 year old me that I would be sitting here typing this on a 7" touch screen, without wires, whilst a tv 40" wide and 1/2" thick played in the background I would have exploded. And don't get me started on the availability of free high quality pornography, the 13 year old me would vanish up my own infinity.

13 year old me thought it would be great to have a home cinema where you could watch any movie you wanted whenever you wanted (yup, before VHS). And a resource to find out how a movie ended if you missed the end, as Halliwell's film guide didn't do that. So I'd be cool with now.

 

[ColinJ]

13 year old me thought it would be great to have a home cinema where you could watch any movie you wanted whenever you wanted (yup, before VHS). And a resource to find out how a movie ended if you missed the end, as Halliwell's film guide didn't do that. So I'd be cool with now.

The 13 year old me used to go to Warwick university computer centre in the school minibus to hand over programs on stacks of punched cards to run on their mainframe computer.

I remember telling a schoolfriend that within our lifetime the computing equivalent of that mainframe would fit inside a large suitcase and only cost about £25,000. He laughed at me. Here we are 40-odd years later and a decent smartphone costing £500 is probably more powerful!

 

[TVC]

The 13 year old me used to go to Warwick university computer centre in the school minibus to hand over programs on stacks of punched cards to run on their mainframe computer.

I remember telling a schoolfriend that within our lifetime the computing equivalent of that mainframe would fit inside a large suitcase and only cost about £25,000. He laughed at me. Here we are 40-odd years later and a decent smartphone costing £500 is probably more powerful!

Sorry to burst your bubble, but your car has more computing power than that. Interesting sudofact. Every two minutes more information is uploaded to Facebook than was created by the whole written and photographic works of humanity until 1990. Most of it in pictures of teenage gurls gurning in a selfie.

How's the homewoek going Sara?

 

[vernon]

I still have mine but I have completely forgotten how to use them. I still regret chucking away my Faber Castell slide-rule when calculators started to appear. Does anybody still have that utter sh1te kit calculator from Sinclair?

I've got the full set. My Sinclair Cambridge programmable scientific calculator is somewhere in the loft. My slide rule is in my man cupboard and my five figure log tables are on the shelf in the bedroom.

Anyone care to extract the nth root of a number using logarithms?

Mantissa and characteristic frivolities anyone?

When A level Physics questions were calculation intensive I used to race my students to answering questions - me armed with a set of log tables and them armed with calculators. I sometimes lost. They rarely mastered their calculators. Twenty years on students are still are not too hot with calculators and have not acquired the skill of estimating the answer to check the likelihood of their answers spewed out from a calculator being correct.