Early Risers.

[TheQ]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/RDGTOOLS-ZEUS-CHART-LATEST-REVISION/dp/B00S9SVESM/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=zeus+chart+book&qid=1610037649&sr=8-1

[Dunsignalling]

1 minute ago, TheQ said:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/RDGTOOLS-ZEUS-CHART-LATEST-REVISION/dp/B00S9SVESM/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=zeus+chart+book&qid=1610037649&sr=8-1

I think mine came from Squires Tools.

 

John

[The Lurker]

No slide rules for me - although I did find one at my last place at work and bring it home; not sure where it is now. We had log tables but calculators were permitted for O level. But we also had to know how to calculate the cosine etc - SOHCAHTOA is something i know and quoted to my boys, but i had never come across BODMAS until helping Younger Lurker with some very basic equation solving - ie giving him the confidence he was doing it correctly. If i had been taught BODMAS i might have been better at maths.

 

I also remember at primary school we had manual calculators where you set various levers and wound a handle round to do long calculations. I have no idea what they were called but I seem to recall that they were vermillion in colour!

 

and when I worked in Brum many years ago, the accountancy firm i worked for employed a lady as a comptometer operator. She used to go out to clients as part of the audit and add up their TBs and stock records. Even in the days of computerised accounting records, it was not uncommon for them not to add up. Eventually they decided she was surplus to requirements but they let her take the comptometer with her and she set up freelance doing the same thing for smaller firms of accountants, whose audits were a little more intense ("thorough"?)

 

I am Ok at arithmetic - it is when numbers get left out of maths that i tend to struggle, but I do remember recruiting somebody who joined us just before the end of the June. Her holiday entitlement was 20 days a year - and joiners accrued holiday by dividing entitlement by the number of whole months worked in the year, rounded down. I was quite surprised to read her offer letter saying she would have 9 days holiday for the remainder of the calendar year. I realised that HR had used a calculator to do 20 / 12 x 6. Because 20 divided by 12 is 1.66recurring, they had got 9.9999 days holiday and rounded it down, and took quite a lot of persuading that the correct entitlement was 10 days. Interestingly the calculator on my phone rounds that sum to 10 nowadays.

[The Lurker]

Greetings al from Sidcup where it is now dark. It was distinctly parky earlier when I went out to acquire Younger Lurker's copy of this week's Autosport and Lemon Drizzle Cake. Careful Polybear, there are already bears here who will not take kindly to another muscling on their territory...i certainly don't get a look in!

[leopardml2341]

41 minutes ago, TheQ said:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/RDGTOOLS-ZEUS-CHART-LATEST-REVISION/dp/B00S9SVESM/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=zeus+chart+book&qid=1610037649&sr=8-1

"Not many electrical engineers carry those around with them"; that was the exclamation when someone saw mine......

 

Mind you it was when I was restoring 'The Leopard' - not sure where they are now tbh

Edited January 7, 2021 by leopardml2341

[Tony_S]

Apart from being able to recite multiplication tables up to 12x12 and very simple arithmetic my mental arithmetic is terrible.  There doesn’t seem to be a memory slot for intermediate stages, I need a piece of paper. At secondary school everyone was supposed to learn how to use slide rules, log tables and calculators. The calculators were mechanical.
Tony

[Barry O]

Her indoors' uncle was a well respected aeronautical engineer (and he designed the UK "Project Mustard" years before the Yanks reinvented it as.. the "Space Shuttle").

 

But he used a circular slide rule.. I tried to use it once but I couldn't get the hang of it... another aeroplane he was involved in was the Tornado.. bless him.. his main hobby was making free flight ultra lightweight aircraft.. 

 

Baz

Edited January 7, 2021 by Barry O

[Andrew P]

I don't want this Post to get Political, and to be honest, I don't understand the American Election System.

But how is that a Country the size of the USA, and with its enormous population can they only find two old age pensioners, one who is showing signs of insanity, and another who has shown signs of insanity to be in charge of a BIG RED BUTTON?

[simontaylor484]

When i was at uni we had a tome called Parrys Valuation tables it was full of years purchase tables ,yields and other information to value property 

[simontaylor484]

5 minutes ago, Andrew P said:

I don't want this Post to get Political, and to be honest, I don't understand the American Election System.

But how is that a Country the size of the USA, and with its enormous population can they only find two old age pensioners, one who is showing signs of insanity, and another who has shown signs of insanity to be in charge of a BIG RED BUTTON?

I know i brought this up at the time of the elections and the fact i didnt expect Biden to get to the inauguration without being assassinated or at leadt a serious attempt. 

[laurenceb]

Learned logs at school, cant for the life of me remember how to do them! My Zeus book has log tables within. Never figured out how to use a slide rule

[tigerburnie]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/RDGTOOLS-ZEUS-CHART-LATEST-REVISION/dp/B00S9SVESM/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=zeus+chart+book&qid=1610037649&sr=8-1

Blimey I'm pretty sure mine has the price on the front of mine..........................3 shillings and sixpence.............................

[Coombe Barton]

2 hours ago, Simon G said:

Although she realised that it did actually work, she had no concept of how it worked, ie by using logarithmic scales

I had to explain the concept to a PhD Maths candidate.

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, Ian Abel said:

Everyone asking, WHERE THE HELL WERE THE SECURITY???

Much reporting suggests that POTUS refused to send the National Guard. Ultimately the VPOTUS authorized the National Guard.

 

The Capitol Police did not have the staffing to be effective in the face of such overwhelming numbers.

 

DC is a jurisdictional maze. Capitol Police report to Congress. DC Metro Police report to the Mayor of DC. National Parks Police report to the Department of the Interior. The Secret Service reports to the Department of Homeland Security. Entities like the US Marshalls Service, FBI and ATF report to the Department of Justice. The do have cooperative memoranda of understanding to collaborate during emergencies.

 

Normally the National Guard (reservists) can be called out by a State Governor. There is no Governor in DC and according to their website,

Quote

The D.C. National Guard is the only National Guard unit, out of all of the 54 states and territories, which reports only to the President. 

 

[polybear]

3 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Anybody's guess whether the cell he eventually ends up in will be the padded sort.

 

His n' Hers padded cells required; anyone dumb enough to marry that tw@t obviously needs one too - I don't care how much money he's got.  Not that I'm suggesting this could be a motive in her decision, however.....

 

3 hours ago, Barry O said:

Had a late requirement to go to the  post office to post a parcel. Not warm out there at all. But I have turned the heating on and the railway room is now cosy. The post office/coop was empty. It is closing for 5 months for a total rebuild.. the next nearest PO has some  strange staff working in it (if you day the parcel has model railway items in it they give you a filthy look). I may need to have a plan B!

 

Now for a mugadecaf!

 

Baz

 

Closing for refurb at a time like this should most definitely be put on hold - are they stupid or what?

As for the strange looks, next time tell 'em you're posting a sex aid and see what happens.  Could be fun.  Maybe they'll check to see if you've removed the batteries....

 

2 hours ago, Ian Abel said:

BIN day and Good GRIEF!

I thought yesterday was going to be "interesting", I was wrong it was TRAGIC.

It seems 2021 saw what happened in 2020, that it took several MONTHS for the COVID SH!T to hit the fan, and proudly said "HOLD MY BEER"!

Here we are a whole SIX DAYS into the new year and we're now the laughing stock of the banana republics

 

 

 

The President of Iran is having a field day:

Meanwhile, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani delivered a speech this morning broadcast by state television in which he said: 'What we saw in the United States yesterday evening and today shows above all how fragile and vulnerable Western democracy is.' 

 

2 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

The gas engineer has called and restarted the boiler and the house is now warming up. I must not have the hot and cold on at the same time and then flush the loo .

 

 

That'll be what they call "progress" then?  So much for these new fancy boilers they insist everyone must have.  Glad I've still got my Baxi Bermuda back boiler

 

2 hours ago, The Lurker said:

No slide rules for me - although I did find  I realised that HR had used a calculator to do 20 / 12 x 6. Because 20 divided by 12 is 1.66recurring, they had got 9.9999 days holiday and rounded it down, and took quite a lot of persuading that the correct entitlement was 10 days. Interestingly the calculator on my phone rounds that sum to 10 nowadays.

 

HR.  A law unto themselves.  And never, ever wrong of course.  How dare you suggest otherwise?  That's your card marked good n' proper.  Again.

 

1 hour ago, leopardml2341 said:

"Not many electrical engineers carry those around with them"; that was the exclamation when someone saw mine......

 

Mind you it was when I was restoring 'The Leopard' - not sure where they are now tbh

 

What's "the Leopard"?

 

5 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

The Capitol Police did not have the staffing to be effective in the face of such overwhelming numbers.

 

 

I suspect it would've ended up in a great big firefight, and the security on duty just didn't have the manpower.  I wonder how many of the demonstrators were tooled-up, and what with?  Can you turn up at such a venue in DC with an SLR?

 

In other news:

Bear has completed the last sh1tty job necessary prior to the Plasterer working his magic (still a couple of minor bits to do, but nicer/easier stuff) - final prep of a couple of walls, including thorough washing down to remove as much wallpaper adhesive residue as possible.  I never realised washing walls could be such bl00dy hard work; Bear was shattered at the end, and with no emergency rations of LDC available.  I had to make do with a mince pie and a couple of jaffa cakes - with some ice cream on the side.....

 

[simontaylor484]

The police have taped off the lane that runs behind our house between our back fence and the allotments.

  Rolo the dachshund went mad on his little security patrol of back garden. Our living room is on the middle floor so we get a ringside seat

[grandadbob]

Evenin' each,

Walk didn't happen because we had a very slight snow shower but  immediately looked at each other and said s#d that, let's not be silly.  The Boss then put her "silly" head back on and went out to do some gardening.  I decided to stay in the warm.  

However after a while I thought to myself this is all wrong and went outside.  No,    I didn't go to help her, instead I went to The Shed and spent a couple of hours doing something  interesting!!  I've actually managed to build a new shelf, move the controller, do a minor rewiring job and tidy up some spaghetti.  Tested it and wheeled thingies seem to be moving OK.     Is this a sign of a returning mojo?

The downside is that after spending some time under the layout, occasionally on my knees,  the port side supporting structure has near enough seized up and is rather  very painful.  The Shiraz I'm drinking is absolutely no use whatsoever for pain relief but it is rather nice so I'll probably have another glass shortly.  After that I may  take a small  dose of cognac.  

 

Edited January 7, 2021 by grandadbob

[Coombe Barton]

1 hour ago, Coombe Barton said:

I had to explain the concept to a PhD Maths candidate.

@PeterBBReason I had to explain was that he'd never used log tables to perform multiplication by addition of logs.

[simontaylor484]

The bit of wind is still coming from the North according to my weather vane  the chimney at the Haribo Factory.

Poly had exactly the same idea as you as to what to tell the post office. I have already told the story of the bloke who used to go in the postoffice with lung samples of deceased miners to send to Sheffield for testing.

[PeterBB]

Saw the terms SOHCAHTOA and BODMAS on Gwiver and later with The Lurker as well as references but could not reply or truly comment because they are totally new terms to me.  Please therefore will one of you erudite others please enlighten me and perhaps tell me why maths would have been easier once in possession of them.  The other item picked up was at 'O' level we had to average across arithmetic, algebra and geometry.  me, well near the bottom of the class with an average of 78% - just shows what a good teacher we had.

[Coombe Barton]

SOHCAHTOA Sine opposite over hypotenuse, cosine adjacent over hypotenuse, tangent opposite over adjacent

BODMAS order of mathematical operations - Brackets, order, divide, multiply, add, subtract 

 

or

 

BIDMAS order of mathematical operations - Brackets, index, divide, multiply, add, subtract 

[Andrew P]

1 minute ago, Coombe Barton said:

SOHCAHTOA Sine opposite over hypotenuse, cosine adjacent over hypotenuse, tangent opposite over adjacent

BODMAS order of mathematical operations - Brackets, order, divide, multiply, add, subtract 

 

or

 

BIDMAS order of mathematical operations - Brackets, index, divide, multiply, add, subtract 

That's easy for you to say.

[The White Rabbit]

Evening all,

 

Thankfully, an easier day today, though still a deafening silence from the hospital. One phone call pursuing the 'you shouldn't have completed those forms' line - I invited her to see if she could get any sense or even a reaction out of the hospital. Hopefully I'm not heading for a hole tomorrow but I got the impression I actually made some progress today. (I'll just sit down a minute, I feel rather light headed...). Thanks for all your support and kind words, it does help, if only so I know it's not just me. 

 

In terms of help, there may be queries coming up but for the moment, how do you quote multiple posts from different pages? I'm fine with multiples from the same page (as below!) But whenever I try clicking on the relevant page number to navigate between pages, that deletes whatever I've quoted and typed. 

 

 

6 hours ago, tigerburnie said:

Our old maths teacher asked the same question of every new first year at high school( he did to me and both of my younger brothers), what weighs the least a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks, everyone went for a ton of feathers ......................lol

 

Or another favourite is to ask if a rope ladder over the side of a fishing boat has rungs every foot and the tide comes in at x feet per hour, how many rungs would be covered in y hours? 

 

3 hours ago, Barry O said:

Had a late requirement to go to the  post office to post a parcel. Not warm out there at all. ... snip ... the next nearest PO has some  strange staff working in it (if you day the parcel has model railway items in it they give you a filthy look). I may need to have a plan B!

 

Been there, done that... "plastic mouldings", "children's toys", "castings" or if you're feeling exceptionally honest, "scale models". 

 

And yes, walked to the local pharmacy earlier, get some air and exercise, and it was certainly chilly. Harsh frost, icy patches, real skiddybonkers conditions underfoot in shady places. 

 

 

My maths isn't too bad but I have been outclassed by some work colleagues. Just before we went into quarantine, I needed some stamps for the autocar newsletter and because the queue at the Post Office was about 200 yards long, I thought I'd get them from Mr C's emporium. I got a little distracted in the queue and absent mindedly asked for a book of 100 stamps (as per PO), the girl said we only have twelves, oh OK, go on then let's have eight books, that's near enough. Are you sure that's enough? Yes, it's 96, that'll do. She looks at me for a few seconds and does it on the calculator, then looked very impressed. I didn't like to say anything but (oh dear, are things that bad? It's only a very simple sum!) I wonder if she read any of the comments on here about calculating sines etc. manually, whether she'd faint or start accusing us of witchcraft. 

 

If it feels like a long winter, remember:

 

 

[BokStein]

Good evening, and what an insight the last 24 hours (one of my WiFi hubs crashed in the early hours so just sorted!)

 

Zeus, SOHCAHTOA, Slide Rules, ah, what memories!

 

8 hours ago, TheQ said:

Arithmatic was a separate subject at O Grade in Scotland.. So no outside assistance to the exam. 

In Mathematics O grade , and Highers,  you could use log tables, and just as I left, Calculators..

 

The clearance team have finished the area outside the lab, I'm feeling exposed as the window from that side no longer has a long line of tall work benches blocking the view.

 

Just had a discussion on a sailing Forum over the meaning of "turning on a sixpence". I think he may have got a bit more confused when I explained the full L.S.D. to him..

 

Just waiting for a 10 G ohm resistor to settle before lunch.. what's on for lunch?   more rabbit food..

 

 

 

 

IIRC, when I sat my Maths GCE O level it was the first year that calculators were allowed. I also had a CBM Scientific (probably still have somewhere; I know where my [later acquired] CBM Pet is!) Back then, the best thing about calculators was writing 71077345 on the display! Those that remember will know; those that don't, unfortunately, googgle leaves not much to the imagination!

 

For that exam, I had a slide rule, my calculator and asked for the standard issue book of log tables.

 

4 hours ago, Barry O said:

I used log tables up to A level Maths. A couple of colleagues had slide rules.  A CBM scientific calculator was bought for university - my mental arithmetic was quicker.

 

At Cricket Scorer training a lot of the attendees are floored by the ability of her indoors and myself to work out strike rates, wickets per ball, runs to win etc without using a phone or calculator. I feel sorry for the younger  people in life.. when the "phone" makes a mistake they don't know how to check it..

 

I have only had a go at clay pigeon shooting once. The instructor reckons I am a natural as I can calculate the point to aim at to hit the moving clay.. It is actually easier firing a Challenger 2 tank.. point ..lase..fire!

 

Baz

 

Baz, I agree that given the practice we had had pre-calculators, the brain could be faster than the transistor. I heard the story that the reason the Millennium Bridge wobbled was that all the calculations were done using the CAD tool and that no one could properly interpret the results.

 

3 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

I think mine came from Squires Tools.

 

John

 

2 hours ago, tigerburnie said:

Blimey I'm pretty sure mine has the price on the front of mine..........................3 shillings and sixpence.............................

 

My first Zeus book cost me 75p (15/-). I have since bought a less biohazardous copy from Squires for £2.99! Log tables, Sine, Cosine and Tangent tables all included.

 

50 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

SOHCAHTOA Sine opposite (over) hypotenuse, cosine adjacent (over) hypotenuse, tangent opposite (over)adjacent

BODMAS order of mathematical operations - Brackets, order, divide, multiply, add, subtract 

 

or

 

BIDMAS order of mathematical operations - Brackets, index, divide, multiply, add, subtract 

 

Sorry, CB, that revolting pedant within me has forced my to parenthesise your definition as SOoHCAoHTOoA doesn't look quite right!

 

Now, while I was at Uni, Rogers and Mayhew's Steam Tables used to cause me grief until an independent tutor from Portsmouth Poly (my father was head of Mech Eng there!) introduced me to their Steam Chart - no looking back!

 

And after all that, I forgot to mention Napier's Bones!

Edited January 7, 2021 by BokStein

[New Haven Neil]

Ah, steam tables - I was just going to mention them!  Still got mine....somewhere.....