18-09-2019, 06:59 AM
An ounce of theory often saves a ton of practice but there's often no substitute for trying something. Part of the art of engineering is recognising what mix of theory and practice will get you where you want to be.
Your dad was very wise. Never confuse precision with accuracy. Slide rule accuracy (2 or 3 signifcant digits) is good enough for most purposes. The slide rule also teaches you about orders of magnitude since you have to do those by hand. When using a calculator it's very easy to out by a factor of 10 or 100, simply by miskeying. "It must be right, that's what it says on the calculator". If you've used a slide rule or mental arithmetic then you will gain a feel for a rough answer and spot those errors.
Your dad was very wise. Never confuse precision with accuracy. Slide rule accuracy (2 or 3 signifcant digits) is good enough for most purposes. The slide rule also teaches you about orders of magnitude since you have to do those by hand. When using a calculator it's very easy to out by a factor of 10 or 100, simply by miskeying. "It must be right, that's what it says on the calculator". If you've used a slide rule or mental arithmetic then you will gain a feel for a rough answer and spot those errors.
www.borinsky.co.uk Jeffrey Borinsky www.becg.tv
