Students’ calcs in the 70s/80s

[Leviset]

Don’t know if anyone can help with this?
I studied Pure Mathematics between 1980 - 1984 at University, the course included a 1 year Computer Science component.
My 1980s calculator was a Casio programmable - bought for me by my Father in Law!
It was step programmable and I think it was on of the Casio FX- models.
All I can remember is that it had a [PRG] button and 4 storage areas on 2 keys giving [P1], [P2], and inverse of those 2 gave [P3] and [P4] locations.
I can’t find the model - I’ve looked really hard honestly!
He bought it in 1980/81 and I think it was possibly one of the FX-80/81/82 range
Dennis

[vaklaff]

(01-02-2024 05:58 PM)Leviset Wrote:  My 1980s calculator was a Casio programmable - bought for me by my Father in Law!
It was step programmable and I think it was on of the Casio FX- models.
All I can remember is that it had a [PRG] button and 4 storage areas on 2 keys giving [P1], [P2], and inverse of those 2 gave [P3] and [P4] locations.

[Prg] is on the fx-4000p but not the four program slots. They are present on less capable models like the fx-200p. I can’t recall any model sporting those two features together but I may be wrong. Anyway, take a look at http://rskey.org/CMS/exhibit-hall?view=article&id=94 - not exhaustive but the eighties are covered pretty well IMHO…

[floppy]

(01-01-2024 06:27 PM)badaze Wrote:  In France, in the 1980’s, teachers were not really aware of the capabilities of programmable calculators or pocket basic computers.

In my lycee anno 1984 I suppose they were a bit aware of calculators. https://lycee-freyssinet.fr/
But for 1-2 guys having an HP41 (me) and a TI (my guess about another guy), they did not spend time to chase the unicorns but were quite happy to see the weirdos programming them. That was in fact quite rare to see students making builder studies / making concrete the saturday morning and later taking the path of Math Sup/Spe and engineering..
Happy crazy time in a democratic peacefull athmosphere (no politics, no religions, only too much drinking the week-end).

[Johnh]

As a university engineering lecturer in Sydney I've taught about 3000 final year students over the last 10 years or so. TBH, I've never seen any of them using a programmable calculator!

But, the smart ones get right into developing their own spreadsheets (they all have MS office provided free), or coding with C or Python etc.

When you take a problem apart and understand it to a point where you can code it into some computational device, you really get to understand it. And when we were students in the 70's and 80's, the programmables were all we had, and my smart nerdy students today, with their laptops etc, are really the same kids that we were then.

[Peter Klein]

(01-02-2024 08:19 PM)Johnh Wrote:  When you take a problem apart and understand it to a point where you can code it into some computational device, you really get to understand it.

This is key. I remember that when calculators first became widespread in the mid-70s, some parents grumbled. Students would not learn basic arithmetic skills, and this, along with rock music(*) and relaxed dress codes, was dumbing down that would lead to the collapse of Western civilization. What they didn’t realize was that every advance in technology leads to the “black boxing” of lower-level details. But this enables people to do more and solve more complex problems.

I attended high school a little earlier, just before the availability of scientific calculators. Interested students could hang out in the computer lab with DEC PDP-8 and PDP-11 machines. We had to solve a few initial problems from each math lesson on paper. But we then got full credit if we wrote a BASIC program to solve the rest. Some parents objected that we weren’t learning our ‘rithmetic. Meanwhile, we were also writing routines in machine and assembly languages. We learned skills that could form the foundation of a career.

Some people have never understood that beyond the most basic level, the key to learning is conceptual thinking. Calculators and computers allow that much better than rote memorization and endless drilling. (And yes, I realize that just typing in an equation from a book does not mean you understand it. And that some people will only acquire the most basic math skills, and only with a lot of drilling. One size does not fit all).

(*) A case could be made for civilizational decline in the case of much rock music, but that’s another subject for another day. ;-)

-Peter

[john gustaf stebbins]

(01-02-2024 10:29 PM)Peter Klein Wrote:  

(01-02-2024 08:19 PM)Johnh Wrote:  When you take a problem apart and understand it to a point where you can code it into some computational device, you really get to understand it.

Some people have never understood that beyond the most basic level, the key to learning is conceptual thinking. Calculators and computers allow that much better than rote memorization and endless drilling. (And yes, I realize that just typing in an equation from a book does not mean you understand it. And that some people will only acquire the most basic math skills, and only with a lot of drilling. One size does not fit all).

In high school I had similar experiences. Those of us that had access to calculators and computers had to write our own programs to solve the problems, which would give more insight into the math and science than just doing the work the hard way.

In college I had mixed results. One TA graded me down on a lab report because the instructions were to plot your data and eyeball a trend line. I calculated the best fit line, but it didn't look right to the TA's eyeball.

Another TA in a mathematical modeling class saw what I did to plot out the homework graphs with a program and asked to keep my papers to show others. Probably my biggest academic mistake was not asking to come along when he was showing them off--could have led to a whole different career path.

[Thomas Klemm]

(01-02-2024 10:29 PM)Peter Klein Wrote:  Students would not learn basic arithmetic skills, and this, along with rock music and relaxed dress codes, was dumbing down that would lead to the collapse of Western civilization.

They should have known better:

Quote:We know because our well-documented research has shown conclusively that a child who lacks his own personal computer during those earliest school years will very probably grow up to be a bass player in a heavy-metal rock band who wears women's fishnet pantyhose and sticks his tongue down to his kneecaps.

[dm319]

(01-02-2024 05:58 PM)Leviset Wrote:  All I can remember is that it had a [PRG] button and 4 storage areas on 2 keys giving [P1], [P2], and inverse of those 2 gave [P3]

My dad had one of these FX-3800P in the 90s when he was studying economics.

There are other programmables here with a similar set up with I and II buttons.

[Johnh]

an aside on rote memorization:

10 years before we even knew what a calculator was, at age 6 or 7, we were having to stand up in class and recite:

"three threes are nine...
four threes are twelve...
five threes are fifteen..." etc

up to the 12x table

It's still pretty useful to have those results stuck in my head, but at the time I was hopeless at them because they were way too boring. So I secretly 'cheated' and made myself a table with a 12 x 12 grid with all the results on it, carefully adding up and checking each entry. And I noticed the easy results and the patterns along each row and column and down the diagonals. And then I didn't need my table anymore!

With more grown-up problems, a similar learning outcome is gained by programming a machine in some way, if you do it in a way that requires insight into the problem.

[BruceH]

(01-06-2024 07:41 PM)Johnh Wrote:  an aside on rote memorization:

10 years before we even knew what a calculator was, at age 6 or 7, we were having to stand up in class and recite:

"three threes are nine...
four threes are twelve...
five threes are fifteen..." etc

up to the 12x table

It's still pretty useful to have those results stuck in my head, but at the time I was hopeless at them because they were way too boring. So I secretly 'cheated' and made myself a table with a 12 x 12 grid with all the results on it, carefully adding up and checking each entry. And I noticed the easy results and the patterns along each row and column and down the diagonals. And then I didn't need my table anymore!

With more grown-up problems, a similar learning outcome is gained by programming a machine in some way, if you do it in a way that requires insight into the problem.

When I was at Junior School, teachers were still allowed to embarrass laggards, er I mean "display a leaderboard of who was able to recite which table". To progress you had to recite successfully in front of the teacher (during break - not in front of the whole class). You had to go in ascending order so those tricky sevens, eights and nines held a lot of people back until, suddenly, you got the tick for nines, tens and elevens in one go. :-)

We only had to go up to 12 though. My Mum, on the other hand, said she was required to memorise the 20 times table!

[Garth Wilson]

I was in a classroom with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades all in one room.  For the 3rd- and 4th-graders, there was a large times table set up, probably 30" square, going up to 12x12, and somehow it sank in before I even needed it.  I never made any specific effort to memorize it, but it stuck.  My best friend in my same grade (2nd grade) later went on to become an electronics engineer, and yet somehow never did learn his times tables.  (Unfortunately he was later killed by a drunk driver, a repeat offender who should have been in prison!)