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Educating in Steps and Where Have Too Many Stopped

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holy-cow
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Back in the days when we rode our dinosaurs to school and a computer took up a 20' x 60' space in an environmentally-controlled, highly-guarded location, computer classes focused on teaching how to think the way the computer was programmed to think (machine logic). This was like learning how to speak by first learning all the parts of speech, their eccentricities, preferences, plural forms, gerund forms and sentence diagramming. Ninety-five percent of the work was in communicating what you really meant to the stupidest machine in the world. Today, people think they are computer whizzes if they can type without looking at the keyboard.

Back then we were forced to think out in great detail where we wanted to go and the best way to get there. Today prompts appear suggesting what you probably want to do and warnings appear to guide you back onto the correct path. Back then it was do it right or don't do it at all. So, we learned to do it correctly on the first try. That no longer applies. Just toss something at the wall and see what sticks.


 
Posted : August 21, 2016 10:49 am
mathteacher
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I wonder how many spreadsheet conversions from degrees and decimals to degrees, minutes, and seconds suffer from the error for negative values outlined on page 18 of this excellent book:

http://www.sage.unsw.edu.au/ls/BRH_Survey_Comps.pdf


 
Posted : August 21, 2016 11:58 am
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