Re: People are too dependant on calculators
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Re: People are too dependant on calculators
Donald F McKay (donmckay@JUNO.COM) wrote:
: Why don't you try to calculate x^5+2x^4+3x^3-x^2+10x-90=0 on paper and
: see how long it takes, it took me 13 SECONDS to do it on my TI-85. Or
: remember 2 dozen formulas and know when to use them.
:
: Donald McKay
: donmckay@juno.com
:
: "Carpe diem" - Horace
I agree that people are too dependent on calculators, although I am (was)
addicted once too. In calculus in high school I relied on the calc way
too much...but that got me addicted to programming which lead to me to
become a Computer Science major...but that's another story. Now that I
have taken calculus for the last 2 years, derivatives, integrals, etc. are
MUCH faster to perform on paper rather than on a calc. Plus, some calcs
have wacked out trig identities so the result is different from what you
would have gotten had you worked it out on paper (although the answer may
still be correct). If people didn't rely so much on calcs and learned
form experience (just like a well designed calc would), calculus is just a
matter of understanding the concepts, which is what you lose when plugging
in values into the calc.
--
*****************************************************************************
Scott Kidder | E-mail: kidder@cs.ucdavis.edu
Computer Science & Engineering | Web: http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~kidder/
University of California, Davis | Linux for life
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