re: #465 KansasMom

I once had a smart-ass teacher say that calculators weren’t allowed for the test, but that anyone who wanted to bring a slide-rule was welcome. My father tried his best to teach me how to use his, but I just didn’t get it.
I wish I had tried a little harder at it, would be a neat skill to have.

One very important thing it teaches you is approximately what number to expect, you have to know what ball park the answer will be in. Too many people (including newbie engineers) don’t do this and blindly trust the value displayed on the calculator which can often be wrong due to a bad keystroke. In the first chemistry class I took in college slide rules were mandatory.