On Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:54:21 +0000, Warren Brown wrote: > Most analog devices are more accurate than their digital counter parts. Take > the clock, there is an infinite number of places between the 12 and the 1. > That's not accuracy; that's precision. Nowadays both the clock with the digital display and the clock with the analog display are apt to have quartz crystal frequency reference and digital innards, and thus to be similarly accurate.
>> ====== Robert A. Rosenberg ====== wrote 2008-08-09 06:29: >> > At 11:43 AM -0500 on 8/6/08, Rick Fochtman wrote about Re: California's >> > COBOL payroll system: >> > >> > When second-graders are permitted to use calculators for arithmetic >> > I have a fantasy that when spinning wheels were introduced Luddites protested that their children would lose the skill of spinning yarn by hand and the deep understanding of the nature of yarn. I can neither spin yarn by hand nor by wheel, nor weave cloth, nor tailor my own clothing, nor plow my garden with oxen, nor hunt the wooly mammoth for food. I can do arithmetic by hand, or with a slide rule. But all these things must be displaced to accommodate more relevant topics in our educational curricula. Roman numerals and "English" weights and measures should be soon to go, though an erudite, now infrequent, contributor to this list is apt to protest. Roman numerals, abaci, Napier's Bones, slide rules and Curta calculators are topics for history of mathematics, not the mainstream. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
