teacher | RobertLovesPi.net

Calculators are important tools.

Well, so are guns.

Everyone acknowledges that, if guns are going to be used at all, certain safety precautions are essential. While it generally is not a matter of life and death, the same thing is true of calculators.

I have seen — multiple times — students multiply or divide some number by one, using a calculator, and then be genuinely surprised when they got the same number with which they started. I have also seen a bright student calculate the mass of an atom, and get an answer larger than the mass of the earth. When I informed him of this, his reaction was predictable: “But that’s what the calculator says!”

These are examples of calculator abuse. Aside from avoiding errors, such as the “planetary atom,” it’s also important not to abuse calculators because such an act is insulting to one’s own brain.

Some people treat calculators as if they are omniscient and infallible. They aren’t. They’re small, simple, narrowly-focused computers. The human brain is also a computer, but a far more advanced one. The calculators are our tools, not the other way around.

Here are some tips to prevent calculator abuse:

1. Know how to do arithmetic without a calculator. If you don’t know, learn.

2. Use calculator-free mathematics when appropriate. If you need to know what six times eight is, for example, it insults your own brain to consult a calculator. Don’t do it!

3. Calculator-free mathematics is not to be called “mental math,” for the simple reason that ALL math is mental. Also, if you ever meet anyone claiming to have invented that insipid phrase, kick that person immediately.

4. If you have contact with children, promote the use of calculator-free math to them. This is most important, of course, for parents and teachers. It is no service to a child to raise them to be dependent on a calculator.

5. Finally, when you do use a calculator, don’t be too trusting of the little thing. Check your answers, constantly, by using estimation. Say, for example, you’re multiplying 109 by 36. That’s “a bit over a hundred” times “a bit under forty.” Since forty hundreds is four thousand, the answer has to be in the ballpark of 4,000 — and if a calculator disagrees, the calculator is wrong, probably because a human pressed at least one incorrect button. You will press incorrect buttons on occasion — we all do — and it’s important to have a method in place to detect such errors. This estimation-method is both simple and effective.

All these principles boil down to this: be smarter than your calculator. They aren’t actually very intelligent, so this is neither difficult, nor unreasonable.

RobertLovesPi is the name I use on the Internet, and I come to WordPress as a refugee from Tumblr, where I have grown tired of what I call the “reblogging-virus.” I am here to get a fresh start.

I am interested in a great many things. It would be silly for me to try to list all these topics here and now, so I won’t do that. My interests will become apparent as this blog progresses.

Regarding demographic basics, I was born in 30 B.G. (“Before Google”), but have become so accustomed to life in cyberspace that it now seems, to an almost scary degree, as if I am a native. I am 44 years old at the time of this blog’s inception, and work as a teacher of science (as well, sometimes, other subjects, varying from year to year) at a high school in Arkansas. It doesn’t take much math to figure out that this blog is starting in the year 14 A.G. (“Age of Google”) on my preferred calendar — if one knows that, unlike with the conventional calendar most Americans use, there is a Google Year Zero, also known as 1998 CE. And, yes, I invented the Google-based calendar myself. Why not?

As for my cyberspace name, it isn’t a joke. I really do love pi. Just don’t spell it with an “e,” please. If you do, that refers to someone else.

Also, my favorite number isn’t 3.14, no matter what your geometry teacher told you. And, no matter what I Kings 7:23 says, it certainly isn’t exactly 3. This can be proven with nothing more than a coffee can and some string.

Evidence is important to me, for I have been fooled before. I try my best to keep myself from being fooled again. If you want to persuade me of anything, be prepared to show me the evidence.