Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

PasturesNew

GDB2222 wrote: »

Aside from the issues with us oldies learning a new way of doing things, grid multiplication seems quite logical. There's a nice explanation by example here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_method_multiplication

It seems quite straightforward, just different from what we are used to.

I clicked/looked, taking just the first example, of 3x17, the grid is just a drawing of how I'd work it out in my head.

I'd see 3x17 and would think: 3x10 is 30, add 21, answer 51.

GDB2222

Amazon packaging.

zagubov

GDB2222 wrote: »

Anybody interested in the truly bizarre should enjoy this.

http://loweringthebar.net/2016/09/frozen-guru-update-iii.html

Essentially, the guru's followers claim he's not dead, just in very, very deep meditation. So, deep that they have put him in a freezer so as to make him more comfortable until he wakes.

In the meantime, there's a squabble about who controls his vast fortune.

Wasn't there a character in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who was spending a year dead for tax reasons?;)

silvercar

michaels wrote: »

What worries me is that often the teachers with their super new methods in maths do not have the know how to see that their new wonder method is equivalent to the old method just a different way of writing it down.

I was doing dd's grid multiplication on the homework website and really struggled because it requires adding some quite large numbers but entering the digits in the wrong order - ie most significant first.

I remember log books and slide rules.

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

He worked out, by hand, Pi to half a million places.

Why by hand? There were computers available from the 1950's that could easily handle that work. If I'd known those tables were calculated by hand, I'd never have trusted them.

PasturesNew

GDB2222 wrote: »

Why by hand? There were computers available from the 1950's that could easily handle that work. If I'd known those tables were calculated by hand, I'd never have trusted them.

Dunno. But he was probably the fella that created the first computers, so calculated everything by hand initially as a test for the computer's competence... and liked it so kept going

Pyxis

GDB2222 wrote: »

Aside from the issues with us oldies learning a new way of doing things, grid multiplication seems quite logical. There's a nice explanation by example here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_method_multiplication

It seems quite straightforward, just different from what we are used to.

I like explanation by example. It's nice to see a simple case worked through before trying to generalise. I have no idea why the traditional teaching method is to work out the generalised version and then give examples?

I'd never heard if the grid method, so that was interesting! Thanks!

silvercar wrote: »

I remember log books and slide rules.

I used log tables....still got mine somewhere.

Never used slide rules, though. Dunno why!

Loanranger

I used log tables and a slide rule in 1960s at work.
After struggling to work out square roots, I then went out and bought a calculator, with a square root button. This was for an OU course many decades ago.

ukmaggie45

I remember log books too. And slide rules. I've still got my slide rule in one of the gazillion boxes I must sort out and donate/chuck most of what's in them. We had a cylindrical slide rule in Biochemistry in the first lab I worked in. Much easier to use than the flat ones.

GDB2222

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

I remember log books too. And slide rules. I've still got my slide rule in one of the gazillion boxes I must sort out and donate/chuck most of what's in them. We had a cylindrical slide rule in Biochemistry in the first lab I worked in. Much easier to use than the flat ones.

I still have a cylindrical slide rule that I bought. It was almost as accurate as logs, whilst being as fast as a slide rule. One day, somebody will puzzle over what it was for. If Trump and Putin don't blow us all up.