the new math: old battle of the lovees was: PDP1 3569

Have you seen a Physics text recently? Many constants are give to 9 or more. Obviously someone considers more than three useful. The point of significant figures is just that... are the numbers *significant*. That is to same do two values differ in a meaningful amount. If your experiment is good to 5 significant figures and only matches to 3, then the numbers do not match. That's the point of them. Close is in fact not good enough in science.

Sorry, but that argument is totally bogus. Knowledge does not disappear short of a cataclysm of Dark Ages proportion, at which point there are other things to worry about. I can make fire with flint and steel, matches have made that a less useful skill, but it will hardly be forgotten. A friend of mine reads the clbuttics in the original ancient Greek, the fact that there are translations available has not removed this knowledge. My students will sanity check derivatives and integrals (formulas and specific values) and even converging-diverging series using numerical methods on a graphing calculator. These skills did not exist when I was taught. Work pretty well. I know those of us who learned Calc years ago all made mistakes that would be caught in seconds by my of my current students.

I'd say more that they are required to follow mandated processes, but there are in fact many that still possess diagnostic abilities.

I fail to see how that's any different that an "oops, forgot to carry the 2" mistake that would have been made with pencil and paper or in by mental arithmetic. Having one way to work it out on a calculator or one one longhand is still one way.

Bill