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Robert Bonomi (in ) said:
| *snort* who needs a series approximation?? I've had the numerical
| value of pi, out to _20_ decimal places, memorized for more than 35
| years.
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| I have, however, *rarely* needed more than 6-place accuracy for
| same.
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| Now, the numerical value for 'cornbread', THAT's a different
| matter. grin
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| Note; I also used to have a handful of common log values memorized.
| And a dozen or so trig values. With that, and a 'half-angle'
| formula, you can do faily impressive pencil-and-paper
| 'approximtions'.
Lucky you! I've never been able to memorize stuff like that; but
somehow managed to remember basic formulas like the series
approximations. I can remember thinking early on that the actual
numbers weren't as important as the relationships that produced them.
Now I see 'em as two ends of the same stick that different people feel
comfortable grasping in different places.
Heh heh. Just remembered the physics prof who got repeated cases of
the heebeegeebies because I started nearly all problem solutions with
"F = ma" and derived whatever I needed from that. It was my first real
clue that we're not all wired alike.
Pencil and paper works - but (IMO) there are better tools like slide
rule, calculator, and computer to make calculations faster and easier.
A side note: a couple of years ago I wrote a tiny/fast sine/cosine
subroutine that divided a quadrant (quarter circle) into 256 parts and
used a table of 256 16-bit numerators and a common denominator of
65535. The subroutine folded all angles into the first quadrant and
interpolated to produce sine and cosine values accurate to +/-
0.0000005; it made me wish I could memorize the table.
Cornbread is good. I have the formula around here somewhere...
:-)
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html
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