bgribble@jarthur.claremont.edu (Bill Gribble) (05/15/91)
Well, you know the HP48 has become a part of the educational process when professors design tests around it. I just finished a Chem Eng class, one of whose profs was a completely AR guy who wanted us to have ALL unit conversions memorized. The other prof thought this was silly and said "If your calculator can do it, fine." So up comes the final. Two parts - one part *no calculators allowed* where you just list unit conversions. Bleah. Prof was quoted as saying "HP calculators won't help you on this one." ***************************************************************************** ** Bill Gribble Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA ** ** bgribble@jarthur.claremont.edu Never heard of it? You're stupid. ** *****************************************************************************
akcs.kevin@hpcvbbs.UUCP (Kevin Jessup) (05/16/91)
I wish college professors would come out of the dark ages and realize that a calculator is not a crutch but a tool. To quote a recent editorial in EDN magazine..."If your having trouble hammering that nail into the board with a rock, isn't it time to advance to the hammer?"
HCLIMER%UTCVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Harold Climer) (05/18/91)
Was Harvey Mudd related to Harry ? Re: "I MUDD"
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Harold Climer
Physics Department
U. Tennessee at Chattanoogaacmfiu@serss0.fiu.edu (ACMFIU) (05/21/91)
In article <28319e55:3105.1comp.sys.handhelds;1@hpcvbbs.UUCP> akcs.kevin@hpcvbbs.UUCP (Kevin Jessup) writes:
]I wish college professors would come out of the dark ages and realize
]that a calculator is not a crutch but a tool.
]
]To quote a recent editorial in EDN magazine..."If your having trouble
]hammering that nail into the board with a rock, isn't it time to advance
]to the hammer?"
well, i'd tend to disagree. while many of you would argue that the
calculator should be used for mundane tasks like the lower-level math
stuff, i'm quite glad i'm forced not to use a calculator at all in my
math classes. then again, my highest math class is calc III with
statistics coming in the fall. however, i'm of the belief that if the
professors got by with their wimpy calculators way back when, then i
can get by just fine under similar circumstances. after all, is academia
now asking their students to do *more* rough calculations.
or maybe the teacher should not ask for exact solutions but solutions
in symbolic form. i'm also happy to be taking logic courses where we
rarely encounter the lame stuff but you'd be surprised how much you thought
you knew about low-level math until you get to proving some of it.
alberts872607@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (George Tzanatos) (05/23/91)
acmfiu@serss0.fiu.edu (ACMFIU) writes: >In article <28319e55:3105.1comp.sys.handhelds;1@hpcvbbs.UUCP> akcs.kevin@hpcvbbs.UUCP (Kevin Jessup) writes: >]I wish college professors would come out of the dark ages and realize >]that a calculator is not a crutch but a tool. >well, i'd tend to disagree. while many of you would argue that the >calculator should be used for mundane tasks like the lower-level math >stuff, i'm quite glad i'm forced not to use a calculator at all in my >math classes. then again, my highest math class is calc III with In maths, you might enjoy repeating the same mundane task 100 times. I'm doing an electronics eng course, and I over the last 3 years, I've had to do enough matrices to last me a lifetime - How many times do you have to do a simultaneous equation solution using matrices to learn it? The object of most excercises is to learn what the circuit is doing, not how to learn cramer's rule. Sure the students at that time only used calculators - but at that time, having a simple calc was equivalent to owning a HP48 now. Have a day :)