The Old Rules

Frederic D. Schwarz’s article about slide rules (“Notes From the Field,” Fall 1993), caught my eye. My comment is that newer is not necessarily better. I teach physics, math, and computer courses, and I keep telling my students that one should first consider the task at hand and the desired results before automatically grabbing for a pocket calculator or a computer. For certain types of calculations, slide rules can still run rings around any electronic instrument. A case in point is working out grade curves for the courses that I teach. For the kind of calculation involved, and given that I need only two- or three-digit accuracy, I can get grade curves much faster and much more efficiently with my old slide rule than with anything electronic. It must be some kind of ultimate irony for me to be using a slide rule to work out grade curves for computer courses.

Edward A. Vondrak
Professor of Physics and Mathematics
University of Indianapolis
Indianapolis, Ind.