# Lost skills.....could humans do it again....without computers



## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Was doing some basic math with my son tonight - you know calculate the side of a right angle triangle with 64 sq meter area.









Had to think about it for a few minutes but of course it could be looked up quickly.
Calculator allowed some trial numbers.........
My son of course has no idea why on earth he should be "learning" something that he can "look up" anyway.









Man went to the Moon and the SR-7 Blackbird were engineered on slide rules.

The atom bomb too.

Cathedrals, aqueducts, towers and temples built with hand calculations....some lasting millenia.

Are those skills lost forever or could they be "relearned" from the texts we have.

Could we, would we, tackle the moon again..without computers.

Given there is little "real life" use for knowing how to say, "do a square root" is it a waste of time to teach kids the technique.

Would it not make more sense to concentrate on *using* the "extended" knowledge that the internet and computers supply rather than going to first principles?

We don't break language down as far as we do math - we concentrate on use.

Einstein had to climb out of the "the way it's done" trap to visualize his breakthroughs and THEN brought the math into play.

Should we cultivate "obsolete skills".??......or move forward making the assumption the "enhanced knowledge source" that the internet and the computer supply. Even handwriting is becoming obsolete.

The same argument/questions might apply to farming skills.

Could we *"do it again"* given our "modern" skills.


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## Cynical Critic (Sep 2, 2002)

There are people who possess the base skills to do math, architecture, farming and so on. Although I agree many more know the applications of these skills and don't know the basics without the aid of things powered by computer chips. I believe if we've been ingenuitive enough to get where we are now, we could relearn anything that has been relegated to texts and computers.

From an educational standpoint I'm disturbed how weak our basic math skills are in North America. We can do complicated math with the aid of calculators and computers but if we're left do it by hand we're alarmingly slow. I'm guilty of this. I didn't think of it until a highschool student I was tutoring from Taiwan was able to do long division in his head with incredible precision.

I've always wondered how damaged society would be if our electricity or just computers were removed. With our focus on specialized and abstracted knowledge, how well do we all know the basics as a society?


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

Macdoc, a most interesting posting that causes one to reflect (a mark of a quality post). I must give it more thought, however.

My son is in grade 12 and has chosen a math elective which stresses the use of math with NO calculators. MUN has a math entrance exam that does not allow calculators.


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## thewitt (Jan 27, 2003)

Great food for thought 'Doc.

But one correction:



> Man went to the Moon and the SR-7 Blackbird were engineered on slide rules.


I don't know about the SR-7, but computers were there to help the Apollo moon mission.

I visited that site and here are a couple of photos I took.










Pretty cool, they re-enact the launch and landing with the actual command centre (that actually wasn't in FL).

And notice the logos on the jackets that are there.










So... Can we do anything without computers?


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

It's true to an extent on the moon since it covered a decade but much if not all of the engineering that went into the Apollo, the lander etc was slide rule based.
Indeed with 2 million independent yet interdependent systems the Apollo craft was totally dependent on computer operations BUT I believe there was little in the way of CAD for the design.

My daughter was sort of google eyed ( pun intended ) when I did a simple solve for two squares in my head ( love those entry into the idea questions - makes dad look smart  )
I certainly think good "in the head" basic math is useful but Trig??

If we have limited time to educate kids should the focus be on those basics or on using the extended abilities the internet/computers offer to the best effect.

Dr. G obviously there are two schools of thought given the "no artificial intelligence" requirements.

Some would argue that top notch math and language basics allow more informed thinking from a "disciplined thought" aspect.


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## MannyP Design (Jun 8, 2000)

I know the design community would be weeded out pretty quickly.


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## Brainstrained (Jan 15, 2002)

Interesting, I just had this discussion about the value of learning square roots with my Grade 8 son last night.

Other than arguing that school isn't necessarily important for what you learn, as how you learn to learn, I'm afraid I was rather stumped.

I'll have to reflect on this more.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Manny your handskills wasting away are they ?? 
Forgotten the old wax and white board with the stat camera techniques have we??.  

Let's see pre computer would be back to early Linotype  
We'd have to get Sinc out of retirement.


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## Loafer (Jan 7, 2004)

I think learning basic math skills like that is more about excericising your brain and using it to work out problems in your head in future life which may not exactly be math related.
It is obviously a basic need for any kid to understand the key elements of math if they were to study it further and have understandings of more complicated math problems.

True, most people don't have any requirement to know this kind of thing....but if we took that attitude about schooling then teaching would severely suffer I feel.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

I agree to a point and that's where I think the issue lies.

We don't do a lot of things anymore the way they used to be done.
I think for instance Morse code is now being dropped as a requirement for certain licences.
Some basics sure but where should the computer/calculator internet take over.

I want my daughter to "reason" about history not remember King Billy's victory date.
I want her to know and understand why his victory has implications today......not memorize something she can easily look up.

Perhaps with math focusing on the "consequences" and "application" - ie showing the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapsing due to harmonics as opposed to be forced to learn how to calculate the harmonics.

Does an architect, could an architect calculate structural wind loads these days, I don't think so, but he has to know that he needs to.

So should "know what needs to be known" be stressed and leave the memory/calculation grind to the computers/internet.

At one time programmers did it line by line, now they use preset modules and I suspect many could not do a "from scratch" application. ( I'm no expert but this is just for illustration ).

When do we slough off vestigal skills ( anyone know how much to feed a horse of 11 hands







) and concentrate MORE on the skills that match today's technology.

A pilot learns far more electronic navigation these days than "by hand" calculation because he can't fly "by hand calculation" anymore. ( no navigators in jumbos ).
It's hard enough to keep up with the electronic side without getting bogged in "hand calculation" let alone taking "star sights".

So for kids, or ourselves, where should the concentration be??

Yet do we as a civilization risk losing skills ( as in the Dark Ages ) because we "don't need them anymore"??

They had to bring old early programmers out of retirement to deal with Year 2000 issues as all the skills to make changes had been lost. That's one example. I'm sure there may be more.

Certainly western medicine is waking up to traditional healing skills and knowledge being lost.


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## used to be jwoodget (Aug 22, 2002)

Most pure computational courses at university use abstract languages since they know that it is the principle of programming that is more important than a potentially soon-to-be-obsolete specific language. Personally I think it is important to learn certain basics as they underly much of what we take for granted. Calculators do not show you logic. Finding an entry error is difficult. But working from first principles provides the back-up tools if needed. We all abstract our knowledge accumulation in any case. Two people experiencing the same event will have quite distinct recollections. We simplify, correlate and associate. Likewise with basic mathematical functions, language skills, etc.

While knowledge is also cummulative, every so often we follow a dead-end and need to retrace our steps. So knowing where we came from and sharing a common base knowledge is very important.

Besides macdoc, you used the calculator in the trig example in a non-ordodox manner - to run interative estimates. That skill/methodology is something that is not intrinsic to the calculator.

In any case the only number you need to know is 42.


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## JAMG (Apr 1, 2003)

Math scils r gud 2 halve, butt eye can sea y they halve felled outta youse wit puters' that du math.

At lest, posting on-ligne keeps up gud literassy and basic spelink. Commune ickating is crucible in dis daye and aging.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Good auld Adams RIP.

Yes I interated towards a solution BUT the solution was sitting on the computer in front of me









Basics to a point but where's the point and is it a case of masters and journeymen where a few by choice or inclination or pay know the "deep parts" of any skill set while the journeymen employ the method without underlying principles.

My dad made his own tools, that skill is mostly lost and likely not much missed.

We CAN concentrate on first principles but how to set practical limits and then, given finite teaching time, are we then limiting the overview which in my mind is more critical to develop.
The WHERE and WHAT FOR trig issues as opposed to the actual calculation.

Now an understanding of physics at least Newtonian ( again without the math ) strikes me as fundamental "needs to be taught".
Laws of thermodynamics etc so we might "understand" an orbit without necessarily be able to calculate one.

My daughter and I were discussing a variant of this.
She finds "dissecting" poetry annoying in class.
She knows the iambic bits etc but much prefers the "thing as a whole" be discussed.
That the "knowing the underpinning" takes away from the experience.

Sort of like understanding a painting as a work of art without needing to know oil versus water colour issues.

Is it better to have a kid try and build a bird house and from that draw the understanding of what he needs to know or look up to get it right......as opposed to teaching the basics without reference to the "real world".

Are we bogged and fogged in detail which we can safely leave to the computer/internet/calculator??
Do kids lose wonder and discovery in the fog of fundamentals.


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

Your Spell checker will find nothing amiss with this:

Jerry & Susan stared their sale boat on the waives of the incoming tied into Trinity Bay where they dropped anchor for the knight. The rainbow above Knew Island was a beautiful site & fare whether was visible on the near bye hills all though hale was poring down on them & filing the baling pales. While Jerry read his male, Susan fort to fold the sales the way she had been taut.

Eventually Susan took a rest, the pane in her soldiers maid working on bored the Golly Gee! miserable. She fund her sell phone & punched in her answering service numbers. She was annoyed to here one massage that told her appointment for her weekly message had been canceled.


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## Cynical Critic (Sep 2, 2002)

Too many university students rely on the spell checker and get results as you've posted Dr. G. I suppose you've seen this in practice though.

School should be about learning how to learn. Students should also be learning the basics of reading, writing, math, science and other more modern skills. However, the process should emphasize life-long learning and ways to learn instead of forcing knowledge many of us will forget or relegate to recesses of our brain.

I imagine the hardest line to walk is determining what is necessary base knowledge and what is not. I'm all for self-directed learning and studying what we're interested in while in the classroom but to a certain extent there are other necessary skills that everyone should learn (such as writing and basic math) but may not desire to. 

From my viewpoint I think the education system needs to be more flexible for different types of students but it also needs to be more extensive in its training of basic skills. High school curriculums often lack components necessary for being successful in university (as I found out).


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## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

FWIW, when in High School and taking Math 11 and 12, we had to learn how to do everything without calculators. The only reason we really had them was to speed things up. Knowing the formulas and how they break down is all well and good, but I don't know many people who can multiply 5 digit numbers in their head :/


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## khummsein (Sep 12, 2003)

about spell-check, i wonder if it's better to teach "spelling" the traditional way, or teach people how to (properly) use a spell-check.

actually, i think the best way to learn how to spell is simply to read. then misspells just LOOK wrong.

"basic math" is super useful without even really knowing it..."take 10% of the price then add half of that to get the tax/tip amount"...

the "basic math" besides arithmetic that is the most useful to me is algebra. it's the kind of logical leap that helps in all aspects of life (solve for unknown). even though you can program a computer to do it...maybe only programmers will have a grasp on this stuff in the future?

one more thing: even though you can look up almost anything on the web, it is unverified and kind of dodgy information at best. as long as that's taken into account, it's a brilliant source of info


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

I'm with you on this. I never use spell checker. Mis-spelled words simply don't look right, so I go back over my posts and re-edit them as best I can. By myself.

This comes from reading. Not a machine.


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## bopeep (Jun 7, 2004)

I often misspell words. Sometimes I fix them, sometimes I don't. If I'm really stumped I go to dictionary dot com. 
Am I reading? Am I using a mchine? 

I am using my machine to make my life easier. I am not relying on my machine to do my reading for me. 

Anecdote: My Ex-hubby and I owned a comic book store. There was a kid that was a customer. He was in grade 10 and it was obvious he could barely read. It was also obvious he wanted to be able to read, to be able to join in our discussions about the most recent comic etc. 
He would literally beg his father for a comic book - all of $2.35 - $4.15. His dad said, an I quote -- gawd I remember it so clearly -- 'those things'll rot your brain'
Well, I lost it... I don't remember everything I said to him that day, I know I was ranting. At the end of it all, I remember him saying something about the computer being able to help him. As they left, I gave the kid a novel to take home, and said he was welcome at the store anytime. 


RE: Education - what is needed and what isn't. 
Calculate the circumference of a circle, any shape for that matter. 

Recently I needed to fence a circle with a diameter of 60 feet. 
I KNEW I had learned this formula. I remembered it once I found the formula.. felt a bit stupid. 
Asked some highschool kids and they had no idea either, nor did they have the skills [or maybe just the foresight] to look it up. It worries me sometimes. But then I remember what I was like as a teen and I guess I'm ok, and am a product of the public school system. My parents paid attention to my education, encouraged me to read. I read obsessively. Kids in school now are encouraged to read and learn. Parents think that the schools and various electronic devices are responsible for raising and educating their children.. absolving them of any responsibility...except maybe dressing them nicely --- what would the neighbours think if they weren't? 

uh oh.. I'm ranting again. 

Bo


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Language and computer aid I think are a special circumstance.
The computer will always help you correctly ot multiply or square root. but willnot help you interpret the result in realtion to use.....that's human turf.

But interpretive skills are what's needed and one is correct use of words and out of that flows spelling.
So the computer might be useful for things like Teh - my haint - but waive versus wave needs contextual interpretation and that's a bit what I'm on about.

WHEN to use waive versus wave, iconoclast versus curmudgeon.
The computer can help a bit in spelling but little on the interpretative and meaning end.

Should the concentration be on the spelling or the interpretation and use.?


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## vacuvox (Sep 5, 2003)

_I want my daughter to "reason" about history_

There are a pile of great books available now that I think ought to be mandatory reading. 

Longitude
The Professor and the Madman
The Map That Changed The World
Galileo's Daughter
Blue Latitudes
Fermat's Last Theorem
God's Equation
Between Silk & Cyanide
etc. etc. etc.

Yes - they're awfully trendy... but, in this case, that's not a bad thing.

These tend to be stories about how a single person's vision and lifelong endeavor has profoundly influenced the world as we know it.They teach history, literature and science (etc) all at once, in context and harmony, in an intriguing and entertaining way. They each explain the necessity, the why and the how of a single strand of our cultural, scientific or technological evolution. They take otherwise abstract studies like math and illuminate their utter practicality, necessity and wonder. They leave you with another piece of the infinite puzzle in place. They make the puzzle grow larger and more interesting. They inspire you to learn more - as much as possible, to be creative, to strive, to work hard and to find or make your own path in life.

I think - anyway... (wish I had found them sooner!). And yes I believe that without firm roots, a tree can only grow so tall. Basics and priciples are what elementary education is all about.


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

Raad through James Burke's "The Knowledge Web" for ways in which knowledge is made up of interlocking "threads". Seemingly unrelated events are linked together, which is the way in Life.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

I always love Burke's "Connections" TV series for same reason.
You learn a hell of a lot.....in context.....and enjoy yourself immensely.

That's exactly what I'm driving at.....in context .
V V you might want to add "Germs, Guns and Steel" to that list.

An amazing and informative journey through the technology of man and it's consequences. What a range of disciplines he covers.


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## vacuvox (Sep 5, 2003)

I loved Connections too. Haven't read any Burke books but that is likely about to change. Thanks for the suggestions.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

One of the books that always amazed me was *Soul of a New Machine* that won a Pulitzer prize in 1981.

I read it early in 1985 just as I was getting started with Macs and the entire industry was starting to explode.

One of the revelations was when the senior team leader realized that the "machine" could no longer be concieved within a single human mind.

The complexity had gone beyond the ability of a single human.
Up to that point computers generally were designed by a single person ( ala Cray ) or Wozniak ( to come ).

He was blown away that no one human mind could comprehend or understand the new machine.....it HAD to be teams. He was humbled and it stuck with me this "thing beyond an individual".

In some ways the WWW is beyond nations, beyond encompassing comprehension by an individual or projecting all but the roughest notion of it's path. 
We can play at the blind man and the elephant with it but it's larger than our minds and imaginations.

Teilhard de Chardin would have been thrilled as it IS the noosphere he envisioned

http://www.gaiamind.com/Teilhard.html



> He suggested that the Earth in its evolutionary unfolding, was growing a new organ of consciousness, called the noosphere. The noosphere is analogous on a planetary level to the evolution of the cerebral cortex in humans. The noosphere is a "planetary thinking network" -- an interlinked system of consciousness and information, a global net of self-awareness, instantaneous feedback, and planetary communication.


Gibson came at it from the novelist perspective - Neuromancer was incredible



> "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding..."
> 
> William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)


We're living in it, have no idea where it's going, it's beyond and person and beyond any government.....try as they might.


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

James Burke was here at Memorial last spring giving a lecture re his new Knowledge Web. He is as motivating in person as he is on the Connections series. His talk was supposed to run one hour, and lasted nearly three. He is the classic storyteller getting off topic.


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

Personally, in my more limited experience with math and spelling, I've found that learning the theory, or just in general how to do it without a tool is extremely beneficial.

This is what they did for us in Calgary throughout elementary and junior highs. After that, you learned that tools are incredibly helpful, but they would always demonstrate how the knowledge behind how to use the tool is much more important then just the tool.

For myself, my spelling is normally quite good, but I know I always have Mac OS X's spell checker turned on as a safety net, and as a tool. It's not something I depend on.

As for math, I'd much rather use a calculator, I just can't do too many operations in my head before dropping a number somewhere.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

When I was in school, calculators did not exist. Slide rules were available, but banned from use in our high school and for the record, I never could figure out how to use them anyway.

I used either my head or pencil and paper for everything, and finished two entire basement remodelling projects using the method.

When calculators became affordable in the early 80's, I began to use them. Now I tend to use them all the time, but the occasion still arises when out camping where I need to fall back on those old skills.

I am indeed fortunate in knowing how to use both.

Cheers


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

I'm in agreement with Sinc. Know the process involved and be able to undertake this process using paper and pencil. The calculator only makes getting the product easier/faster, but one still understands the basic process.


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## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

I use a spell checker. It's called my brain.

If you see a misspelled word on my part, that is probably because I type fast and rarely double check.


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