Electronics, Plotters, and Sailing Skills

Sgeir

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Read a very interesting article yesterday about logarithms. (See the full article at http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d609770a-6ab3-11d9-9357-00000e2511c8.html0.

The writer, John Whitfield, makes the observation: "Youngsters can’t understand why their elders find programming a VCR so difficult; the next generation won’t know what a VCR is. Sang’s story is a reminder that intellectual obsolescence is just as prevalent, and powerful. Technology is replacing knowledge and memory".

Because of our increasing reliance on machines, he wonders if "we may have swapped intellectual resourcefulness for convenience".

This got me thinking about the number of things that we used to do quite easily, but now have no need to do because of machines.

For example, square roots. A very basic and important calculation, but in our house, neither of us can remember how to do them - and she's got a diploma in statistics, being dead clever an' 'at! Fortunately Google has pointed us to helpful sites.

Again, I've been tentatively getting into the basics of sextant use. I don't even know if tables for tangents, sines, cosines etc are still published.

Which brings me to the navigation stuff.

A lot of YM, LIBS etc is about electronic navigation. Although the books always say that electronic plotters should be backed up by paper charts etc, but what actually happens? Are people who spend several hundreds of pounds on plotters and software, really going to be inclined to back up on paper? Perhaps many e-Forumites will, but are they typical?

Is there a real danger that electronic dependency and our growing lack of familiarity with manual/mental calculations will make it impossible for us to make sound judgements when the stuff doesn't work properly?



John Whitfield's article appears at http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d609770a-6ab3-11d9-9357-00000e2511c8.html
 

tcm

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Re: unnecesaary fretting

old skills are always being replaced.

Frexample, i can't build a house using straw, catch fish or make a fire by rubbing sticks together, so 5000 years ago wd've been dead. Square roots are found iteratively, or using a £3 calculator. If in a prob on a boat, stay offshore and come closer to shore with good viz or on a depth contour (or stay offshore till better viz if depth busted too) and take bearings to establish approx then more exact position. Not too much pencilly work, nor overeliance on one single bit of kit. I don't need think we to fret too much about doing old-fashioned stuff.
 

bonny

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Couple of weeks ago I dragged our old turntable out of the loft, connected it up to our old hifi (which has a phono i/p) and put on an LP.

23 year old son walks through room & says<font color="red"> "Not heard that CD before, sounds quite good" </font><font color="blue">Not a CD </font>replies I<font color="blue"> but an LP.</font> Son now facinated by this revolving bit of plastic with all this good music coming out through a needle!<font color="red"> "You can even hear it from the needle"</font> he remarks.<font color="red"> "How can that possibly work? How can all those sounds come out through 1 pin head"</font> he continues....

By the way, he's just qualified as a mechanical engineer with a 2.1!!!

Gawd help us all. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif
 

Rowana

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Re: unnecesaary fretting

I still have my slide rule ! Never used in in the last 30+ years, though.

Still remember my first calculator - Cost about £13 and had only 4 functions, with red led display. My weekly wage was just over £20, so said calculator cost a large part of a week's dosh. Bought a scientific one a couple of years ago for about £8 (I think). A very small part of today's weekly wage!

I remember when the first digital watches came out. Completely black things they were, and you pressed a button to light up the LED's. One guy I knew bought one, and was proudly showing us when it was pointed out to him as he pressed the button - <font color="red">" That's progress. Now you need TWO hands to tell the time"

</font>
 

Superstrath

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I suspect that the introduction of gps, plotters an'a' means that the majority of leisure boaters are actually much better off in terms of ability to navigate than they were before. By which I mean that a lot of boaters didn't do any navigation at all. They plootered about a known area, and that was that. Not forumites, of course, I mean wee angling boats and speed boats.
Regarding the sextant, we always worked out the calc. using 5-figure logarithms. The same sum can be done on a calculator with Cos function in few strokes. (I'll dig it out if you like). We spent years studying spherical trigonometry - there is nothing like an in-depth understanding of your subject - but in fact got the same result as a Panama-qualified Filipino 3rd mate using sight-reduction tables instead.
Then we got GPS, and suddenly, we were expected to stick positions on charts every few minutes, when, for example, we had previously crossed from Japan to San Francisco with hardly a succesful sight all the way - and no-one much cared. We got there.
Intellectual resourcefulness is still present in todays computer-heads - they just apply if in a different way to us. That's why we can't work the vcr, or make our pc work. I'm not sure that sqaure-root is something that you can do in your heid, is it? You can have a good stab at it, I suppose, but that's about it.

Beautiful day in Ardrossan btw, Arran was magnificent with snow on the peaks.

Alistair
 

Peppermint

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Re: Let us move on with confidence

Back in the late 70's I was a trainee Civil Engineer. We surveyed with chain, staff & level just like Brunel. The Authority I worked at bought a HP programmable calculator for £800. I earned £20 pw. At college we used to get taken to Hatfield Poly, as a treat, because they had a computer. It was as big as a house and had a screen so small it could only show about 10 symbols to the line. I bought a Sinclair scientific calculator for £29. A week x 1.5 of wages. It gave all it's answers, well most of the ones I used, in Rads.

I sailed with some Civils of the modern school, which is all about lasers, sat photo's, CAD and computers, they'd used a level and staff but they'd only done log's & chains in "History".

In every field the Pro's have embraced and trusted new technology. They've had to to maintain a commercial edge. It's only us hobby-ists that worry about it.

My slide rule, a natty circular model, is on my desk as I type. If only I could remember how to do something really clever with it.
 

Cotillion

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To me, part of the joy of going to sea is to do so armed with dividers plotter and pencil, working out a course to steer and an EP. Taking bearings, running plots, tidal heights and luverly secondary ports I love doing all of it and wouldn't let some jumped up sparky thing take these pleasures away. That said my hand-held GPS is probably the second most important peice of kit on board sailing as I do in the Thames Estuary it can be fairly daunting being aground when 20miles offshore. I know there are plenty of gadget lovers out there and wouldn't put you off them for a minute but once you've pressed the buttons, what do you do with the rest of your time?

kim
 

Cornishman

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Re: Let us move on with confidence

A friend of mine was invigilating a navigation exam for potential second mates in an examination hall which had on side made entirely of glass. The winter sunshine shone through and nearly blinded half the room, so he drew the curtains. 20 minutes later one candidate asked if the curtains could be drawn back again as his solar powered navigational calculator didn't work! Wonder what he would do when on watch at night? /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

Gunfleet

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I wonder how calculators arrive at a sq rt? Do they have a few stabs at it like we do, until they get very close? It seems unlikely.
 

Superstrath

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[ QUOTE ]
I wonder how calculators arrive at a sq rt? Do they have a few stabs at it like we do, until they get very close? It seems unlikely.

[/ QUOTE ]
As TCM says, I think they are done by iteration, which is a posh way of stabbing at it. I guess the calculator just iterates electronically...?
BTW, have you seen the "new" way of doing long division? I sent my 10 yo daughter back to school with "This is wrong" written on her homework, referring to the technique. After I accepted the invitation to visit the school to learn how to do it I understood - BUT it uses a simplified method where you do no multiplying in the sum - you just keep subtracting the divisor. This is the sort of thing that reduces the ability to do mental arithmetic - they are removing it from everyday use. That does worry me.

Alistair
 

Rowana

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There's new ways of doing lots of things! My 13 year-old does her homework on the computer, using a calculator as necessary, <font color="red"> then e-mails it to the school !</font>

I get blank looks if I try to do it from first principles, but let's face it, how are they going to do things once they are in the working world??
 

Its_Only_Money

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Fast-forward to Scotty on the Enterprise in several centuries time - do you think he will have time to learn/practice everything from first principles when learning about warp drive (or whatever future technology we haven't even considered yet), he'll be like 106 before he passes his foundation certificate let alone qualifies to a professional level.

All advances in technology relay on us losing (or not even gaining), more basic skills (starting fires with flints etc for eg), in order to make room (in time and brain space) for the new skills and knowledge.

The brain's capacity for knowledge may be unlimited, trouble is the time to gain such knowledge is severely limited.....

Still ticks me off though when shop assistants can't add up /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif
 

snowleopard

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[ QUOTE ]
I wonder how calculators arrive at a sq rt? Do they have a few stabs at it like we do, until they get very close? It seems unlikely.

[/ QUOTE ]
not the least unlikely. computers are very good at doing tedious repeated calculation. the standard way of extracting a root is the 'Newton-Raphson' method of successive approximation. the same method is used for calculating APRs and a lot of other financial values. the clever bit is in designing a method that minimises the number of approximations and makes sure the approximations get better each time. my old 4.7 MHz PC used to chunk away for a solid 30 seconds to find an APR!

what a saddo i am!
 

Superstrath

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[ QUOTE ]


The brain's capacity for knowledge may be unlimited

[/ QUOTE ]

I heard a discussion recently on R4 about the effect on our memory of the huge number of images that we are exposed to today, as opposed to our naturally evolved experience of seeing the same view most days, with the same people and animals and so on.
Apparently we are using a lot of brain power on storing all these images to the detriment of our ability to remember detail or to apply our grey cells to problem-solving. Made a sort of sense.

Alistair
 

Achillesheel

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The growing use of GPS and electronics is evidenced by the growing number of reports of boatowners setting GPS and autopilot, going below for lunch, and hitting the buoy which was their next waypoint.

For me the chartwork is part of sailing, in the same way that I enjoyed B&W photography, printing and developing film rather than using digital.

I do not own a GPS; for the coastal hops I have done over the last couple of seasons its not really necessary. If we venture further offshore I will prob get one, but would never rely on it totally.
 

Marsupial

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"I do not own a GPS; for the coastal hops I have done over the last couple of seasons its <font color="red">its not really necessary </font> . If we venture further offshore I will prob get one, but would never rely on it totally. "

Tell us again when you have been a mile offshore and fog comes down such that you can't see the front of the boat!


/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 

fireball

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If your only a mile offshore and can't see the fog comming down then I suggest your not keeping a proper watch!
We do have GPS onboard ... its cheap enough to have several.

I don't believe we need to know everything about "manual" navigation, but I'm enjoying trying it. At the end of the day, I want to know that when the GPS fails I know where I am (roughly!) and how to get where I'm going - safely!

It does worry me a little when the "younger" generation a taught these "new" methods ... I would've thought straight mental arithmatic was an essential base for life in general and those without that could struggle later on in life - even in simple things like evaluating offers at LIBS!

Surely an overview in basic principles would be required for a mec-eng degree - otherwise we are just assuming that what has currently been developed is as good as it can be and no ground-up work could improve it ....
 

Gunfleet

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The thing I notice is kids' lack of ability to approximate. I think we here are probably all of the slide rule generation. So when we're looking for the answer to a sum, we naturally want to know what order of number we're looking for. For some young people that skill seems to have disappeared almost entirely. In its turn this means they've lost control of number - whatever the machine says, that must be true. Of course you get the same attitude in sailing too, and this is what the 'don't give up the sextant' brigade are probably really concerned about.
 
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