most common question asked in a maths classroom: "why do we have to do this why can't we just use a calculator"
blatant lie told to every pupil since like 1980: "you won't always have a calculator available"
actual truth: "calculators are devil objects, none of them work the same, you'll only really be acquainted with how exactly one of them works across your lifetime and when it comes time to use it again you'll have forgotten how it works anyway"
(obviously wolfram alpha is google as a calculator but better)
@MililaniVF because handwriting recognition is Hard™
@a_breakin_glass they don't have to be literally written.
but for example if i want to calculate √2+√3 i should be able to input keys in that order.
frequently calculators will require you to instead input 2√+3√
@MililaniVF @a_breakin_glass That's less of an issue nowadays, with the various "perfect algebraic" calculators in the past, oh, 10 years or so, FWIW.
(Of course, I use RPN calculators, which are more honest about how they work - EVERYTHING is backwards. Calculators that insist on 2√ are exposing the fact that their calculation engines are actually RPN under the hood, even though they claim to be algebraic.)
@MililaniVF @a_breakin_glass Of course, good luck remembering HOW TO ENTER more complex stuff, even how it's written, on the application-specific calculator keypad layouts, if you don't use it often...
@MililaniVF (1/3) When I was 16, my mother was building a house in the middle of nowhere. To set cinderblocks for the foundation, we measured the sides and then the diagonals to verify the foundation was square. The diagonal needed to match the Pythagorean theorem, a^2 + b^2 = c^2. One day at the house site 10 miles from civilization, neither of us had a calculator. Despite being shown how by my mother more than once, I still cannot remember how to calculate square roots by hand.
@MililaniVF (2/3) However, I had learned how to approximate square roots, and the upper bound on the approximation error, using calculus. I had paper and pencil, so I calculated our diagonals to the precision I felt we could measure. I wonder if my mother made me calculate the diagonals (instead of doing it herself) to make her point that I should remember it too. I suspect that my solving it (thereby ruining her lesson) with calculus (the only math she dreaded) probably pissed her off royally.
@MililaniVF (3/3) That feels like an apt description of my childhood: I tried to be a good kid, but somehow I was never good enough.
That said, I think my story is the EXCEPTION that proves the rule and your point. Nowadays I don't go anywhere without my phone (and pager) that has all the calculator I need.
@MililaniVF im not sure teachers can even say that lie anymore, since almost every kid has a smartphone pretty early on and that thing has a calculator built in.
hell even non smart mobile phones have a calculator built in,
@puppy oh they do, it's a mix of being out of touch and more generously that the actual answer is a lot more complex and abstract to communicate and is equally unsatisfying to most pupils so you're stuck either way
@MililaniVF solution: the only calculator you may use is stuff you have written yourself in a well-maintianed programming language.
@artemist the actual truth in my tongue in cheek post is not in fact the actual truth
@MililaniVF near-future version:
"Why do I need a drivers license when cars just drive themselves?"
@MililaniVF Real answer, "Because most Western instructors have no idea what Chisanbop is and couldn't teach you how to use it to do advanced arbitrarily long arithmetic on your hands at lightning speed if they tried."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisanbop
Also, when you're in college you'll often be forbidden a calculation device at test time -- even if you're dyslexic and doing so would be a reasonable accommodation; ADA be damned. So, you had better learn math longhand.
@MililaniVF
Also calculators:
Here use this Ti-84+, it can draw graphs and shit, but you won' t need this daily, you will use computers for that and do some simple calcs you forgot to do on paper with anything called calc.exe, calc or whatever has +-*/ .
All good points.
For me, science is being able to crosscheck and validate a result. That's why you shouldn't use a calculator in a maths classroom.
*whispers* this isnt the actual truth, there are actual real reasons, please stop trying to explain them to me especially when yr all wrong.
why can't calculators just let you enter problems in the same way you would write them like ffs.
google is literally the best calculator