“Up until pretty recently, engineering math was done on slide rules, which are limited in the number of significant digits.”
Must be a matter of one’s frame of reference ;). I took engineering classes from 1980-1984, and there wasn’t a sliderule to be seen. We even did some programming, but in my freshman year, we were using punch cards.
However, we did use slide rules in high school chemistry.
I guess that does show how quickly things changed back then.
And good observation on the significant digits using a slide rule.
Not many years later, the curriculum required use of a personal computer. Makes sense, since that's the tool of choice. One thing about working with slide rule, the "order of magnitude" has to be kept someplace other than on the "calculator," and one developed a sense of order of magnitude of many attributes.