Toiling through these long-winded logarithm problems, I find it interesting that the results I get by hand or slide rule differ by one or even two significant digits from the results that the electronic calculator gives. In order to get calculator-like results "by hand," I have to do extra sub-calculations to match up the mantissa numbers with the desired subject numbers. The process of multiplying and dividing long numbers by adding or subtracting their logarithms seems so time-consuming and involved that I wonder whether it is really a more convenient method at all. The negative logarithms are especially confusing.

The mechanical devices like slide rules and calculators are so much of an advance on the pencil-pushing use of tables and interpolations that it reminds me of something I once heard concerning the history of science and technology. Only when mathematicians and scientists could gain a reasonable level of accuracy in calculating things like logarithms, could science and engineering progress forward. The measurements that lead to scientific discoveries or technical inventions, despite all those banks of computing girls doing the work by hand, need far more accuracy than mistake-prone hand calculation can do. And of course nowadays, the level of measurement and accuracy is so incredibly high that only electronic devices of vast and ponderous power can crank out the results.

One of my Friendly Scientists assures me that I have actually done more physics than I thought, and a quick review through one of my physics texts would send me on my way into the next "semester's" work. But it's still a long way from where I am, to the time when I will be formally introduced, that is, mathematically introduced, to atoms and the world of subatomic particles, let alone energy and space-time. I am still in the eighteenth century scientifically and mathematically, though in the nineteen-fifties technologically. To use a musical analogy, I'm listening to a peculiar combination of Bach and Elvis.

Posted at 2:43 am | link