Subj : Re: PI to 104 Decimal Places
To   : Kurt Weiske
From : Ed Vance
Date : Thu Aug 28 2025 16:00:32



>  One of those teachers who make an impression on you was a calculus
>  teacher I had in college. He had an interesting approach to come at
>  problems from a different perspective to help you understand them.

>  In the movie "Ender's Game", when Ender says "The Enemy's Gate is
>  Always Down" and the perspective changes, I thought of his class.

>  We were encouraged to buy programmable calculators - the stepwise kind
>  where you could automate steps into the calculator as a procedure, then
>  enter a series of X and Y values and it would step through them - a
>  precursor to graphing calculators, as you'd have to plot them
>  yourselves.

>  The rich kids in the class brought HP 41C calculators. Oh, how I wanted
>  one of those! I had to settle for a cheap Casio programmable with 30 or
>  so program steps, total.

>  My professor's opinion was that computers would soon do all of the
>  grunt work that mathmeticians did by hand now. With computers, you'd be
>  freed to do the creative work and let the computers grind out the
>  results.

>  It struck a chord with me.

>  A year before, I flunked a senior year high school math class and
>  was required to take another course. The only one available mid-year
>  was Computer Problem Solving, which inspired me to work with computers.

>  If I hadn't flunked that class, I would have completely missed the
>  experience of the teacher who reinforced the value of computers as
>  tools of computation and might not have been as inspired.

>  Despite years of experience, I still enjoy doing computations and
>  turning the calculator upside down to spell 80081E5. I suppose your
>  inner child never *really* grows up.

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The first calc. shown to me was a HP-30 ( 35?) given to an employee of a
electronics company.
He showed me what all it could do and My Jaw Dropped.
Ed
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