imperfect exponential

I don't miss slide rules one bit. They don't keep the exponent, and don't even add or subtract. And often I need 6 or 8 digit accuracy.

I do love my old HP Reverse Polish calculators. I have a lot of them.

I've got pretty good at numerical estimation. That's not calculating in the classic sense, it's analog guessing, sort of the mental equivalent of a sloppy slide rule. I can hit most things within 5% or so, and many things exactly. So to design a control loop, I can usually guess the compensation values that will work, and then Spice it if I need to really tweak settling times or something.

I find myself fact-checking almost every number I see, to see if it's reasonable. Newspapers have an amazing level of innumeracy, freely interchanging "million" and "billion" and saying all sorts of unlikely stuff. They apparently don't teach much math in journalism school.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

I use both fairly often. I've even used the algorithms for multi-pass arithmetic and fractional fixed point arithmetic in FPGAs.

We were taught similarly but only after years of the classical method, and not seriously. More importantly, though, we were taught arithmetic in bases other than 10, and the conversions between bases. A really good method for teaching the insides of numbers and arithmetic.

Art of Engineering? Does he mean Art of Electronics? That's a lot of pixels gone wrong.

He should review page 360 of AoE3.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Typical reactionary leftist.

020109090005090207010209

John Larkin did get his university education at at one of those US universi ties where the average IQ is less than 100, but this does sound more like s enile dementia.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

One of the times I literally laughed out loud... lol

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Rick C

020109090005090207010209

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Slide rules aren't for highly accurate calculations. But they are

*fast*. I can multiply and divide several numbers much faster on the slide rule than any other device I've used. Calculators require you to punch in the numbers and that is slower than lining up the slide on a slide rule or setting the cursor to read the answer. Chain calculations are really a snap. Even squares and roots are easy as are a few trig functions.

I don't know why anyone would dis a slide rule even if they aren't used much. They are impressive devices.

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Rick C

LOL!! I think we all need a crutch these days.

Long division is well named: it takes a long time to divide a pair of

5-digit numbers, and the chance of an error is substantial.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics