"math isn't important anymore because of calculators"
(which I actually heard tonight from someone who should know better)
makes it clear that we, as a society, have really failed to empower people to understand what math actually is in the first place.
I have no idea how such a shitty product can exist. Same price buys you a Chromebook; there are plenty of software libre distraction-free writing apps out there (try opening a terminal and typing "vim"?).
Or you could chicken out and buy a Kindle Fire Max 11 with keyboard case for the same price.
Both of these let you type for more than a day on a charge: the only benefit of the freewrite alpha is an 80 hour battery, which is pointless with USB-C charging everywhere.
@cstross some #TechIlliterate even recommended this shit to me instead if a #Laptop when I was in school.
I told them unless it comes with the same #TTS voice as #StevenHawking has I don't want them to ever be allowed to make any technical decision or suggestion in their life!
Those things are like #TexasInstruments#calculators: an absolute #ripoff given even the shittiest #Netbook with the abundant #Intel#Z3735F#SoC running #OS1337 is more versatile.
And I literally just started that distro.
I'm unreasonably proud of bringing this old calculator back to life. It had a fouled-up tens ring retaining pin that I had sort of fixed earlier this year. Now I've actually milled a new one and reassembled it. And it works! It is capable of more maths than I can math!
In keeping with our back-to-school theme this week, here we have an 8th-grade classroom at St. Veronica's school with 40 students seated at tables or desks, each equipped with a Burroughs calculating machine as a math tool, 1955.
Before I say what it is, I am NOT posting this as clickbait (which is how it's often used)! 😂 I'm posting this as a Maths teacher who knows this topic inside-out and wants to help people to understand it better. There are MANY mistakes that people make and get the wrong answer, and I'm going to cover them in bite-size chunks each week for a few weeks
1/10
This week for #MathsMonday I'm going to talk about #calculators, in particular the current topic of #Mathematics order of operations (which I am nearly finished with now), and e-calculators (I'm looking at you #Developers#Programmers).
It's important to know where brackets go in #Maths expressions, and after last week's topic I ran a follow-up poll https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/111145907574869556 to see how many people could remember the #Math FOIL acronym from High School, because I sensed a deeper issue...
392 years ago, the English mathematician and clergyman William Oughtred introduced the multiplication sign ✕ for the first time. via @fermatslibrary.
Oughtred was the first to use logarithmic scales and sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division. He is credited with inventing the slide rule in about 1622. He also introduced the abbreviations "sin" and "cos" for the sine and cosine functions. via @wikipedia
@gutenberg_org@wikipedia
I am glad to know who is responsible for these #math concepts I take for granted. I got my first #calculator in 7th grade. Our math #teacher warned us not to rely on #calculators because "Sometimes they're wrong!" One of my #CivilEngineering#professors used a #SlideRule to show the importance of understanding the quantities we're working with rather than blindly accepting the results from a #computer. One #typo can lead to disaster. I now have my own slide rule.
To my knowledge, this is the last mass produced RPN calculator - and it’s itself an homage , not without its problems. Still, a pleasure to use , and the lack of RPN calculators is something that saddens me. #calculator#calculators#hp#retro
Hey lovely Mastodon folk. I've just released an HP-35, HP-45, HP-80 simulator called HP-1973 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the HP-45 calculator. (Free) standalone versions for Mac and WIndows (no need for any Python installation or knowledge) & Python source for Linux. It's been a coding marathon, so it'd mean a lot to me if you could boost this post, so it gets in front of the right people. Download here: https://sarahkmarr.com/retrohp1973.html Enjoy. #retrocomputing#calculators#python#coding#rpn
@catnip@mwichary#Calculators (mechanical, natch) were uncommon in the 1950s when Bell Labs was developing the #telephone#keypad, and hadn’t even settled on a common layout. In their testing they found that the top-to-bottom layout was slightly faster to use, so they went with that.
So. I know this is a long shot, but I'm hoping I might be able to find someone in the #Ottawa Metro areas willing to part with one or both of these #calculators... Both of which have been discontinued by #HewlettPackard 🧮 🤓🥼
Wondering what was behind making #Calculators among some of the first mass market consumer devices to be #SolarPowered?☀️
Picked up a device easily a couple of decades old, still works 👏
This Monroe Model G mechanical calculator was made some time between 1918 and 1920, and is the one I used on the cover of my new book. I also featured non-blurry pictures of it as the background image on each chapter, and in those cases left a little easter egg for keen-eyed readers.