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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7851360" data-attributes="member: 6873517">I'm in that age range too. The first scientific calculator I got was when I was about 15, although I'm sure I had a simple calculator before that. However, the math classes didn't accept answers that didn't have full work shown. I taught a good bit of university mathematics as a grad student (and still teach graduate statistics). One pitfall students would often have is over-relying on their calculators. This hit in two main ways. One would be to take the calculator's output literally and fail to reality check it, which requires some level of solid number sense that is developed by, you guessed it, doing hand calculations. The other would be to fail to show sufficient work. I still assign some hand calculation problems, not to make the numbers difficult, but so students can get a feel for what the computer is going to do. Of course, as a university instructor I remain horrified by the misunderstandings that seem baked into the K12 math curriculum, at least in the USA. I do respect that many people aren't good at quick mental arithmetic, so I'm not defending THAC0, but it needs to be understood in the context of the time. THAC0 was fine for people who were adept at arithmetic (I refuse to call arithmetic math) but one thing it did provide was a way to look things up in the table, which, at the time, was considered totally normal. In 1E the to hit tables were in the DMG and were deemed "secret" at some point, although character sheets usually had each character's to hit numbers on them. So one was always expected to revert to the table. In terms of lots of two digit mental arithmetic, it's really, really hard to beat 3E, though. However, it rarely involved negation the way THAC0 did, but a medium to high level character, especially a fighter with a feat like Rapid Shot or Power Attack, could be expected to be managing many rolls with shifting bonuses in a combat round. We used to call it "fighter math" (there's that word again) and it was painful to watch someone who wasn't good at all that calculation try to play such a character.</blockquote>

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