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by tialaramex 10 days ago
> People used to memorize log and trig tables, and no one would say that's part of being a competent mathematician at this point

Do you have evidence that it ever was part of being a competent mathematician? AIUI the trope of mathematicians who can't even do arithmetic was common already before the pocket calculator was introduced last century.
2 comments
eks391 10 days ago
My grandpa was upset that I never bothered to memorize trig tables. Tried to argue that I am not useful when there isn't a calculator around. I can think of several rebuttles to this, but didn't care to use any. He'd already been retired for some time so I didn't expect him to understand why even a pocket calculator is useless in modern engineering analysis, so memorizing trig was no more than a boring party trick performed by the out of touch nerd.
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curuinor 10 days ago
https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/ca...

"It was said that when doing astronomical calculations that required logarithms, which are typically 10 digit numbers in log tables, [C. F. Gauss] would often just recall the logarithms instead of bothering to look them up."

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Jblx2 10 days ago
Is this supposed to be one of those exceptions-prove-the-rule things?
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