Burying the hatchet: computers versus calculators

[kirby urner]

In my nerdy days as a high schooler, a chief joy

was to visit with my friend M, brother to N, and 

program his dad's HP65, one of the first Hewlett-

Packard programmables.  My dad taught me how

to use his slide-rule (PhD/Planning), which I found

fascinating and brilliant, but when it was time to

send me on my way, it was the HP45 we got in

Portland, that graced my suitcase.

M's dad was a road engineer in the Philippines 

and he used his HP65 for real at work.  We just

did little things, like maybe a Sieve of Eratosthenes

and some Fibonaccis or like that.

Fast forward and I'm somewhat behind the times.

My peers are all server-side programming, totally

up on MVC web frameworks in PHP back ending 

into Mongo DB, or even ZODB wrapped with 

Python.  I huff and puff in the middle of the pack

with computers, and I've tended to kvetch about

calculators, as having too long a tail, keeping us

in the land of the Great Dinosaurs (with little 

mammals among us, using real computer 

languages in the course of learning maths).

The peace I'm making with myself involves 

continuing to appreciated calculators, especially

those vintage HPs.  I know what happened next:

the hub of HP innovation in those days was 

Corvallis (Oregon) and the very same building 

planned to service HPs, has been converted to

a nanotechnology lab.  They're trying to figure

out about portable dialysis machines and better

filtration and detection systems, both vital to 

industry.  That's a noble fate for a great sub-

culture. There's been some continuity in staffing.

So today I raise a toast to the calculator culture

and its many victories on the ground.  The world

of silicon (and germanium arsenide) should not

become a house divided.  We celebrate our humble

beginnings and recognize the valuable diplomacy

the calculators represent, in making maths more 

accessible to everybody.  Having a crash course 

in math, perhaps a free one on TV, that did nothing

but exhaustively cover each key and their uses in

combination, would be a waste of no one's time

(if you don't want to watch, then don't).

One of our first exercises on the digital math 

track should be to emulate a simple scientific

calculator on screen, using some event-driven

model.  I've seen it in Java, in wxPython, in 

Javascript.  What better way to make the 

transition?  Never mind, for the moment, that

this isn't how it's taught.  Imagine the way it 

could be.  Now imagine it's not "all or nothing"

as in "every school or no school".  The need 

for experimentation is obvious.  That's the basis

of science.  Those decrying "guinea pigging" 

should read up on "Guinea Pig B" (one of our

chief students).  Even if you're a pious Xtian,

it's as one of "God's experiments" that you 

achieve your purpose and glory, so grin and

bear it in your faith.

To summarize:  I resolve to tease the calculator

users less and focus on emulating their subculture

more.  I salute my peers and wish us both luck at 

making STEM more of a joy and less of a tiresome 

running the gauntlet, emulating automatons.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/2341488571/in/photostream/

Let us together cultivate the lifestyles occasioned 

by the freedoms that our technologies provide.  We

seek not to enslave humans, but to give them the

tools whereby they might thrive, not just survive.

Kirby

[Maria Droujkova]

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 6:46 PM, kirby urner <kirby...@gmail.com> wrote:

One of our first exercises on the digital math 

track should be to emulate a simple scientific

calculator on screen, using some event-driven

model. 

A good advanced exercise is to build an analog calculator using, say, gears. The history of such devices, starting from shockingly ancient times, is fascinating. And if you have 1k hours and 10k dollars or so you can build an analog differential analyzer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmX151Jd3_o

We just discussed the feature of being breakable (or not) from the keyboard. For example, a car is very much breakable from its "keyboard" (you can stir it into a wall or use breaks wrong or...) - it's keeping it from crashing that's challenging! You can easily mess up software and computers in general from keyboards, but not calculators.

This issue is important for curriculum design: power vs. stability.


Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.
 

[Mike South]

http://xkcd.com/768/

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