calculators anne-girl *fogey style* math courses should totally be designed such that kids shouldn't have to use calculators, ever It'd be so much better... use friggin' integers, dammit! you can teach trig with 30-60-90 triangles, or old-skool sin/cos/tan tables for variety occasionally, say... and those graphing calculators are even worse... only used for playing space invaders in class, anyway technology makes us stupid *unfogey* and binary. Excellent mental flexibility "times tables in base 4 today, kids..." is a math geek 050515 ... andru235 you are awesome, thank you. so many mathematic concepts have analogous (pun not intended) routes to explanation that don't require calculators nor genius plus (ha ha), kids get in the habit of adding 220 to 390 with a calculator and then as adults it takes them weeks to come up with 610 if not aided electronically. walking downtown one night i heard someone ask her friend, "um, like what is $17.00 plus $5.50? will i have enough for drinks?" and i was like, no way upon looking at her, i sensed that in fact she knew perfectly well but was merely being 'ditzy'. it reminds me of the talking barbie that says, "math is tough!". that's somewhat like saying "spelling is tough!" ...I~S I~T?!?!? also, people always freeze at fractions like 1/7, for instance. now, with all the other patterns we have learned, what is one more? .142857~ gee, hard to see the relation to seven there... 050515 what's it to you? who go blather from