On Friday 03 August 2012 15:38:26 mechtly, eugene a wrote: > Paul, > > Congratulations on your skill as a master of manual long division! I never > have occasion to use this skill. > > But how many times each day of work as a professional pharmacist do you > actually use manual long division? I'll bet that the monthly average number > is close to zero. You more likely use an electronic calculator, or in > recent years, even a cell-phone calculator.
I don't do manual long division, though I figured it out by myself when I was a kid. Nor do I compute logarithms by hand, though I discovered a method of doing that when I was a kid. I'm figuring the bill of materials for the cabin, which entails, for instance, figuring out whether several odd-shaped pieces of wood, with dimensions in millimeters, will fit in a 2×4 which is so many feet long. For that I'm using a calculator. (I don't have a cell phone.) But I program computers. Once I had to write an arithmetic package for a processor that didn't have a multiply instruction. Or I may write a program that does multiplication and division of polynomials. For that it helps to know how to do arithmetic by hand. Pierre -- La sal en el mar es más que en la sangre. Le sel dans la mer est plus que dans le sang.
