A LIttle Help from Technology

In statistics all day today, it's amazing to me how much time we've spent watching the professor use Minitab on his laptop and the overhead projector walking through calculation of the assigned problems and the key concepts.

This is amazing to me because I'm used to not being able to use technology at all in a classroom setting. In high school and college, we couldn't use calculators (especially graphic calculators) in class. Instead we were required to use the manual method to find the answers. I'm amazed at how much that has changed, and also by how easily the complex answers I used to spend 30 minutes on can now be found in seconds using programs like Minitab.

I wonder, does this mean we now cover so much more material in the same amount of time, resulting in better economy and value for students? Or is there really some intrinsic value to knowing how to do things the manual way, a value we are now losing by using automated computer and calculator software?

I remember a parent-teacher conference I had in 3rd grade (circa 1977). Not surprisingly, I didn't like math. The teacher told my parents that I needed to learn math, the MANUAL way, because no matter what job I had, I would need to know how to do math. I remember the exact quote to this day: "Even if you are a garbage man when you grow up," my teacher told my parents, "you'll still need to know math to be able to do things like calculate the diameter of a manhole cover." Yes, that's really what she said.

Well, assuming I had grown up to be that garbage man, and assuming I needed to calculate the diameter of a manhole cover for some insane reason, what if I now had a calculator? Would I even need to know the manual way? I argued in 1977, and I still argue now 30 years later, that there is little or no value in needing to know how the number is calculated. It's nice to see that, at least so far, my professors seem to agree because they're focusing on the tools used to arrive at the number instead of the formulas used by the tools to arrive at the number.

I don't even want to think about all that frustration, all that time, and all that useless work spent in 3rd grades and so many others, on preparing to be that garbage man.