There's a bulletin board at my local bagel shop, on it is an advertisement for ABACUS LESSONS and every single phone number slip has been taken.
@j2kun I would have taken one, too!
@davidsuculum @j2kun
I learned to use a cheap plastic abacus when I was young; it was fun.
I've forgotten everything but the rough idea by now.
@dougmerritt @davidsuculum @j2kun For more advanced fun the slide rule.
@dougmerritt @davidsuculum @j2kun I had never seen one in real life until Thinkgeek made some years ago and I got one. I knew it was somehow based on logarithms but it took me a little while to puzzle out how to use it. I showed it to some younger engineers I work with, and they were utterly baffled.
I assume there's a bit of an art to organizing larger calculations so that you lose the least precision.
@internic @davidsuculum @j2kun
Those of us who are old mastered slide rules before calculators became available.
It helps to give a tactile feel for common operations, and to solidly ground the idea of approximation.
But yeah, today fun would seem to be by far the primary point.