Since most of us are....

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Flying and a love of mathematics goes hand in hand, given the old days before gps's we used maps and slide rules to help with our navigation, then came the pocket calculator, and then the aviation calculator, and so on.  I found this website and it is rather cool--wish I had one of these websites in grammar school, high school and college since I first started learning Algebra in the sixth grade, in an advanced math course....

https://www.mathpapa.com/algebra-calculator.html

[Jim Young 2,356]

I can see the high school and college students bookmarking this site.  I stayed away from advanced Algebra as much as possible and have survived almost a lifetime without it.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

14 minutes ago, Jim Young said:

I can see the high school and college students bookmarking this site.  I stayed away from advanced Algebra as much as possible and have survived almost a lifetime without it.

My trig teacher in college was so funny.  He allowed us to use Texas Instruments calculators in the classroom, and one day he grabbed one from a student and threw it across the room, the student almost fainted.  Then he picked it up, punched in some calculation, and said "look, solid state circuitry,  no moving parts to break!  Later that year I was flying from SFO to JFK and he happened to be on my Napa airporter bus for a flight to London.  One other time a my high school German teacher was also on our Napa airporter bus when I was on my way to do some business systems teaching in Oklahoma, followed by some in Springfield MO, then finally I went for a month long preparation for my international systems implementations so I could learn how to install Novell networks for my hotel clients and teach them how to operate their hotels with them and the software Holiday Inn and Sulcus provided them.

John

[Adrian123 1,015]

Engineering college. TI 35 was...FM.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

5 hours ago, Adrian123 said:

Engineering college. TI 35 was...FM.

I still have an LCD TI Programmable calculator that still works, although it needs a battery, it is 35 years old, a gift from my parents, solid state of course.  I used it whenever I went car or home shopping, I could quote my monthly payment before the salesperson could try their bait and switch "What can we do to get you into this object today" hustle.  From the time I was five years old my father took me and my brothers to every car negotiation he ever had, to teach us how to buy a car in the commission based car dealership world, and he did the same in home buying.  Car dealers hated him, he was a health physicist and no matter what numbers they spun at him, they could not beat him or any of us as he taught us. 

When I first was taught algebra in grammar school I just did not get it and I was failing hard to the disappointment of my teacher, who doted on me and even in his 80's is still friends with me today.  So I went home stressed to my father, and he took me aside, and he explained algebra quite simply--it is simply a scale, that always stays balanced on both sides, whatever you do to one side you do to the other in the opposite way to keep the balance, until you solve the equation.  I went from math dunce to math genius, and I started tutoring my fellow students to the joy of my teacher. 

In college I never took calculus, I just took trig to satisfy my math requirement because I was a liberal arts major with a focus on counseling, which my college specialized in.  But a friend of mine was taking calculus and phoned me up one night, and I happened to be on my computer.  He told me what he was trying to understand, I wrote a program to solve his problem, then I explained how to solve the problem, it was just a matter of solving differential equations.  I wrote a program which is still available on the Internet called Spirapaint, that mimics the child's Spirograph and goes way beyond its capabilities. 

I wrote it with the help of some university professors who helped me understand the calculus and the equations needed to draw a perfect Spirograph via a computer, I used artificial numbers to assist my program.  I find math and flying go hand in hand, math also helped me learn how to teach technical information to non technical people, I just see math in a non hardened way, in a flexible way, because of the intrinsic beauty of nature and math's graphing abilities, and guidance abilities like the GPS for aviation, or the ASI, or VSI and any gauge in an aircraft that gives the pilot spatial awareness, especially when blinded by weather.

John

[ErichB 3,636]

As I've gotten older, I've come to like algebra more.  I started off hating it.   Gym for the brain.

[vc10man 732]

Loved Algebra  and Arithmetic far more than Geometry as I could never get the hang of proving theorems🤣

Nevertheless, a great link, John.

[vc10man 732]

9 hours ago, John_Cillis said:

Texas Instruments calculators

Now, that evokes memories

 

9 hours ago, John_Cillis said:

Novell networks

Another memory evoker there, John.

3 hours ago, John_Cillis said:

LCD TI Programmable calculator that still works

Not a TI, but mine's a Casio, I think.

1 hour ago, ErichB said:

Gym for the brain.

Bang on, Erich.