3 ms·

But is it worthwhile or important?

• jimbokun 17y ago
  I think it is. If you can't perform the algorithms yourself, I don't think you really understand what the symbols on the machine really mean. When I worked at a bank, I remember complaints about an employee whose job involved running certain calculations in a spreadsheet. Sometimes the numbers would be off orders of magnitude due to some error somewhere, but the employee would just carry on as normal. If you have some clue as to what the calculations are supposed to be doing, there should be some alarms going off if the numbers are not at least reasonable. Or what if you just wrote a program that includes some arithmetic calculations, and need to verify that you are getting the right answers for your test data? I remember another time at that same bank, where a developer did not know that multiplication had precedence over addition, which led to errors in a financial calculation. I'm sure you could easily think up many more examples like this.
  • yequalsx 17y ago
    There was a time when it was important to know how to use interpolating polynomials. Rationalizing the denominator was only useful before calculator became ubiquitous. Being able to make fire was without use of matches or flint used to be essential. There are plenty of ways to teach algorithms without using arithmetic. Maybe a knowledge of doing basic arithmetic by hand is essential to understanding higher math. I don't know. It's worth exploring though.