[Elecraft] (OT) slide rules

Tue Feb 18 17:23:01 2003

You know you bring up a good point.  I'm an engineer and work in wireless
communications and except for digital recovery modes, I use approx. numbers
for design and engineering....remember we're working with 5% tolerence on
the parts anyhow.  But my wife is back in college to become a Cultured
Whore...ooops, I mean Horticulturalist.  She is taking a math course for
design and construction that requires them to do algebra for fill, blocks,
pavers ect.  They are required to carry everything out to 4 places after the
decimal.  She had a quiz on Thursday and had a 1/4 point deducted because
her answer was 5.1235 and the instructor wanted 5.1236....ouch....I mean is
that really going to make a difference on a truckload of 30 cubic yards of
topsoil!  Sometimes I think we expect things to be too perfect...let's get
back to common sense.  I do math in my head every day to ballpark interfaces
and just toss them together......and guess what they work just as well as
the engineered by computer ones that cost 100 times more than my unit.......
It's time to dumb society back down.
Gregg Lengling, W9DHI
K2 S#3075

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron D'Eau Claire" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 4:06 PM
Subject: RE: [Elecraft] (OT) slide rules

> Well, I still have my pristine K&E Log-Log Duplex Decitrig slide rule
> that I carried in College.
>
> The Slide Rule also taught me the value of precision. Not the "nutso"
> to-the-fifteenth-decimal-place precision we see so often now in the days
> of DVMs with four decimal places or frequency counters that display to
> the nearest cycle (excuse me..."Hertz"). Using a slide rule forced the
> engineering student to develop a rather an intelligent real-world
> ability to determine how much precision had any value in the situation
> at hand, and to "round off" knowing what was important and what was not.
>
>
> Uh, oh... that "soap box" slipped right under my feet, Hi! I'll put it
> away.
>
> BTW, I STILL don't know how to use some of the scales on that slide
> rule...
>
> Come to thing of it, there are a few mystery buttons on my TI calculator
> sitting on the desk here....
>
> Hey! Don't even ASK me about some of the more arcane commands available
> on my K2.....
>
> Ron AC7AC
> K2 # 1289
>
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