re: #433 vxbush

So many people were used to calculating sines, cosines, and tangents using calculators that when they had to use tables to find values on the normal or chi-squared distributions they had to be taught from scratch how to use them.

I was taught once how to use log tables and slide rules, but it’s been so long now I’m not sure I could do it.

I use a slide rule all the time. In fact, there’s a pocket-size circular slide rule on the desk in front of me right now. It’s great to see ratios over a broad range. Although a slide rule won’t tell you where the decimal place goes, it will never lie to you about precision. Most real world physical data is only good to about three places, so 12.5% is good; 12.4843% is nonsense.