I’m enrolled in Astronomy this semester. Read that as “astro-physics.”
However, I’m studying mathematics more than astronomy. I’ve had a mostly easy return to academic endeavors to date. My long-term interest in history and my still functional recall of ink on pages, along with the simple act of actually listening to the various lectures has served me well. Add in my freedom to enroll in only those classes that interest me, and I would be pulling down A’s if I were being graded.
Astronomy is a repeat course. I barely survived an earlier attempt at expanding my knowledge of the Cosmos and the laws of physics that define them. The reason was largely lack of mastery of mathematics at the necessary level.
There were no cheap and available scientific calculators 40 years ago. The few that were available generally cost a semester’s tuition and had little more capability than add, subtract, multiply and divide. (For the text challenged, that is (+), (-), (x), & (÷)). The calculators that could and would replace our slide rules were still several years in the future.
For logarithms, trigonometric functions, squares, cubes, and roots, the slide rule still ruled the desk. Exponents were handled by adding and subtracting them on paper or in our brains. Scientific notation was second nature, and the standard level of confidence was three significant figures, again, because of the limitations of vision and the construction of slide rules.
The same limiting factor, lack of higher math skills, is beginning to affect my ability to study astrology again. I need to journey back 40 years or so and refresh my acquaintance with the world of equations, expressions, functions, with the principles that allow Algebra, geometry, and trigonometry to become problem solving tools rather than problems that limit the application of knowledge.
Throughout my education, my verbal skills have always exceeded my math skills. I survived my required chemistry courses by means of exacting technique and the application of formulae as necessary. The physiology and physics classes took quite a lot of repetitive study time with a textbook open to the appropriate formulae.
The evolution of computerized and computer-integrated instrumentation in the clinical lab allowed me to keep current and required me to spend long hours reading operators guides, trouble-shooting guides, and all the other documentation that came with new hardware. As my career unfolded, the necessity of working out new formulae and applying them to a particular assay or analysis decreased in inverse relation to the technical advances in instrumentation. We still used hand-held calculators in some analysis but the formulae were built in and their use became repetitive. The slide rule vanished and math became just another mechanical application that we used like a pipette, a microscope, or an immunochemical marker system.
This brings me to the current semester. Math skills, like all other skills, fade into obscurity and are forgotten if not used and kept forward in the brain’s storage system. I now find myself going to class with a slide rule, a new TI scientific calculator, and operator/usage guides for both. The calculator is a gem, programmed for algebraic calculations. It will last me the rest of my academic life if I tend to its batteries. The accuracy it achieves is far in excess of the three significant digits my aging Pickett slide rules can provide. I have both guides on my laptops. I also have two study guides on demand . Those links are listed below. They don’t take the place of attending math and physics classes, I’ll need to find time for those if I want to regain and retain currency. I do the necessary calculations using my new hand-held TI calculator that has more memory than many mainframes had when I was an undergraduate. I follow up on my slipstick just to keep the skill alive in my hands and head. Last of all, I try the WAG method. There's often at least a 25% possibility that it will be correct. After all, generations of engineers have made it the standard! Will we cross that bridge when we come to it?
The effort required to learn mathematics over again will be sizeable. But mathematics is a necessary language if one intends to be truly literate. This will be a much harder semester than those previous. The reward, if I obtain it, will be well worth the effort. Knowledge is never free but almost always worth the cost.
Back to the books.
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