I've got a slide rule to thank for my precocious early math studies. I was always interested in math as a young kid, and my parents got me a Post slide rule fo

I've got a slide rule to thank for my precocious early math studies. I was always interested in math as a young kid, and my parents got me a Post slide rule for Christmas 1970, when I was in 5th grade/10 years old. I didn't know what the S and T scales on the back side of the main slide were for, so went looking up info in the local library. Turns out they were sine/tangent scales, which led to reading about trigonometry, which led to me realizing I needed to know algebra first. Over the next couple years, those library trips led to teaching myself algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus, thanks mostly to TutorText books. For a nerdy little kid in the early 70s, that was heaven.