From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
Cc: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Re: [TUHS] The most surprising Unix programs
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2020 10:03:08 -0400 (EDT) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200320140308.4FBBB18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> (raw)
> From: Paul Guertin
> I teach math in college ... Sometimes, during an exam, a student who
> forgot to bring their calculator will ask if they can borrow mine I
> always say "sure, but you'll regret it" and hand them the calculator
> After wasting one or two minutes, they give it back
Maybe I'm being clueless/over-asking, but to me it's appalling that any
college student (at least all who have _any_ math requirement at all; not sure
how many that is) doesn't know how an RPN calculator works. It's not exactly
rocket science, and any reasonably intelligent high-schooler should get it
extremely quickly; just tell them it's just a representational thing, number
number operator instead of number operator number. I know it's not a key
intellectual skill, but it does seem to me to be part of comon intellectual
heritage that everyone should know, like musical scales or poetry
rhyming. Have you ever considered taking two minutes (literally!) to cover it
briefly, just 'someone tried to borrow my RPN calculator, here's the basic
idea of how they work'?
Noel
next reply other threads:[~2020-03-20 14:03 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 54+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-03-20 14:03 Noel Chiappa [this message]
2020-03-20 14:08 ` Richard Salz
2020-03-20 14:52 ` Larry McVoy
2020-03-20 14:58 ` Dagobert Michelsen
2020-03-20 15:05 ` Richard Salz
2020-03-20 22:09 ` Mike Markowski
2020-03-20 15:03 ` Gregg Levine
2020-03-20 15:05 ` Chet Ramey
2020-03-20 22:06 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-03-21 4:59 ` Wesley Parish
2020-03-20 21:57 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-03-22 18:05 ` Tony Finch
2020-03-20 15:07 ` Nemo
2020-03-20 19:03 ` Adam Thornton
2020-03-20 16:07 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2020-09-13 15:44 ` Juergen Nickelsen
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2020-03-21 1:12 Noel Chiappa
2020-03-19 20:57 Nelson H. F. Beebe
2020-03-19 21:18 ` Tomasz Rola
2020-03-20 7:14 ` arnold
2020-03-20 7:49 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-03-20 8:18 ` arnold
2020-03-13 23:31 Doug McIlroy
2020-03-14 0:40 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-03-14 11:30 ` Harald Arnesen
2020-03-14 12:24 ` Clem Cole
2020-03-15 22:01 ` Rob Pike
2020-03-15 22:14 ` Larry McVoy
2020-03-15 23:34 ` Warner Losh
2020-03-16 2:45 ` Anthony Martin
2020-03-15 22:30 ` Clem Cole
2020-03-15 23:20 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-03-16 0:56 ` Rob Pike
2020-03-20 23:20 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-03-20 23:35 ` Toby Thain
2020-03-21 0:34 ` Rob Pike
2020-03-17 13:03 ` ca6c
2020-03-17 13:30 ` Andy Kosela
2020-03-17 14:53 ` Cág
2020-03-17 14:57 ` Larry McVoy
2020-03-17 14:59 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2020-03-17 15:40 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-03-17 22:28 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-03-18 0:17 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-03-18 3:28 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-03-18 8:40 ` arnold
2020-03-19 12:26 ` Mike Markowski
2020-03-19 21:31 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-03-20 11:48 ` paul
2020-03-20 15:40 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2020-03-20 16:40 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-03-20 17:23 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2020-03-20 18:43 ` Rich Morin
2020-03-19 20:01 ` Tomasz Rola
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