alt Hacker NewsWhat larger problem can you do in a school setting with a calculator?
When doing algebra you need to be able to effortlessly do sums, multiplications, divisions, factorizations.
Meanwhile if you’re doing a physics or engineering calculation, it’s better to manipulate all the symbols algebraically and only plug in values at the final step.
I don’t see how a calculator is actually useful in driving learning outcomes.
Replies
There’s a bunch of answers to this question, but I think the easiest one is that a pocket calculator contains a table of logarithms.
You can do much of that other stuff by yourself, but no one alive carries a table of logarithms around in their head.
Once you accept that you should also accept that it contains Taylor series expansions for sine and cosine, which you also do not carry around in your head.
I recommend telling a physicist that you feel this way and seeing what they think about calculating machines.
I'll need to engage in conjecture over elementary school lessons from 35 years ago, but one thing that comes to mind is we were calculating circle circumferences and areas quite quickly following the formulas. We still learnt arithmetic techniques by hand (though never logarithms, for whatever reason - I guess calculators replaced the log tables!), but when we moved on to broader things like geometry and statistics, calculator use let us focus on the actual topics and formulas and not repeating the grunt work like generations past.
For anything beyond that, I'd need to take it up with whoever wrote our curriculum! But I know it was mildly contentious at the time, much as the use of even more elaborate technologies are now.