Bingo. I taught financial accounting for 35 years. Over that time, students lost the ability to estimate the result of a calculation and compare that to the result they read on their calculators. A large percentage of students have no concept of scale. 1,000 and 1,000,000 are the same number in their minds.
I'm from the end of the slide rule generation. That device gives you two or three significant digits but no decimal. You have to figure that out by estimating the result in your own brain. That habit has served me well.
Fractions are simply out of the question for the calculator generation and percents are a mystery to many of them. Calculators should not be allowed in math until fractions and percents are mastered.
I always started the first day of college accounting principles with a short quiz.
1. What is 38 percent of 100?
2. True or False? Adam Smith must have written a book or something.
3. What direction is it to California?
The results were appalling.
“I’m from the end of the slide rule generation. That device gives you two or three significant digits but no decimal. You have to figure that out by estimating the result in your own brain. That habit has served me well.”
I too am from that generation, and agree that being taught how to use a slide rule forces you to understand orders of magnitude, as well as logs. It also provides a sense of whether or not your answer is “in the ball park”.