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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAH5Jek388jZ87apV9zSFahDMSPsFxvxt4Z2pD20SHThdqrTaNw@mail.gmail.com">
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#333333">Numbers
are real things. The more one explores them, the more
experiences one has of them, the more confidently one comes to
rely on them.</div>
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<p>automatic cash registers (and calculators to some extent) reduced
numbers to numerals (or in some cases mere signifiers?) so it any
wonder that people whose daily work is facilitated by them are not
only enabled to lose (or fail to acquire) numeracy but have had
numeracy and basic arithmetic (add/subtract whole numbers)
displaced by this. <br>
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<p>The year my parents bought us a dart-board for xmas (mid grade 2)
and the subsequent dart-play-binging and even dreaming dart
scoring really cemented my basic arithmetic skills. The modulo 21
version where if you went *over* 21 you went back to the residual
points over 21, putting a big premium on being able to subtract
your current score from 21 and seeking a 3 dart combination of
scores to sum to that value and then recalculate after each
dart-throw. <br>
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<p>There were no calculators of note (mechanical tape adders though)
in my youth so long-addition/subtraction were ubiquitous skills as
was doing the same in your head for at least a few digit
numbers. They became widespread by the time I was out of college
and change-making cash registers the same... numeracy had already
begun to become numerology at that time (late 70s).</p>
<p>I learned a slip-stick out of curiosity and the
portability/compactness of a trig table-on-a-stick in middle
school with model rocketry (estimating altitude visually) and it
took me from working with numbers to working with quantities and
magnitudes and estimates and "acceptable errors". I probably
didn't do a single calculation with one after that (maybe a
couple) but it really set in my mind how exponents/logs worked and
an intuition for trigonometric relations (mostly just looking up a
tangent of an angle and dividing by some odd number being the
standoff-pacing from the launch of the oberver).</p>
<p>Half the folks here surely used a slide-rule at some point in
their life and roughly half probably only barely knows what they
look like or how they work? Pretty quick transition. Zs and
Millenials probably will have the same experience with maps and
directions... given the mobile devices.<br>
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