Aw diddums, in my day...

[darmstadt]

We were given extra sheets of paper to work them out and then write out how we solved the answer on the exam paper: Edexcel A-Level maths exam: Students furious at lack of whole numbers in non-calculator paper | Education News | News | The Independent

Mind you, I'm still crap at maths

[unemployed]

We were given extra sheets of paper to work them out and then write out how we solved the answer on the exam paper: Edexcel A-Level maths exam: Students furious at lack of whole numbers in non-calculator paper | Education News | News | The Independent

Mind you, I'm still crap at maths

we had to use a ruler with maths answers on in my day

[NickFitz]

I used to write programs on the school's PDP-8/e to do the stuff they were teaching us in maths; the very first programs I ever created were to multiply matrices.

Of course, I first had to understand how to multiply matrices to be able to write the programs.

So I don't have much sympathy for people who can't do calculations with real numbers using a pen and paper, as the algorithms required are the same. If they don't know how to do it by writing it down, how would they know how to do it with a calculator?

[adubya]

Your school had a PDP-8 ? Independent school ?

We had a RM 380Z

[NickFitz]

Your school had a PDP-8 ? Independent school ?

We had a RM 380Z

Public school, though I got there on the 11-plus

It was either the first or second school in the UK to have its own computer on the premises (historians are, I believe, uncertain) - I think it arrived around 1972 or 1973, a short while before me. As I recall it was donated by a rich parent.

Around 1977 funds were allocated to buy an additional 8K of core. The canny teachers responsible for it waited a year or so, and spent the money instead on two SWTPC-6800 machines, each with 64K of RAM, one with twin floppies and the other with a cassette interface. Even the cassettes were faster than the punched paper tape we'd been used to. Halcyon days

[scooterscot]

Technically all numbers are whole. I wonder if they're talking about integers...

[unemployed]

Public school, though I got there on the 11-plus

It was either the first or second school in the UK to have its own computer on the premises (historians are, I believe, uncertain) - I think it arrived around 1972 or 1973, a short while before me. As I recall it was donated by a rich parent.

Around 1977 funds were allocated to buy an additional 8K of core. The canny teachers responsible for it waited a year or so, and spent the money instead on two SWTPC-6800 machines, each with 64K of RAM, one with twin floppies and the other with a cassette interface. Even the cassettes were faster than the punched paper tape we'd been used to. Halcyon days

Another old chunt

[JozefBlofeld]

Technically all numbers are whole. I wonder if they're talking about integers...

Whole numbers as in ...

The numbers {0, 1, 2, 3, ...} etc. There is no fractional or decimal part. And no negatives.

[scooterscot]

Is a number not defined by a set?

[OwlHoot]

Technically all numbers are whole. I wonder if they're talking about integers...

rational

(assuming you mean real numbers used in numerical calculations)