Statistics: Then and Now

I must in a retrospective and nostalgic mood. I remember how I used to have to compute statistics back in graduate school. During my first year, I recall when the statistics class first walked into the department's calculator room. Imagine a room full of calculators that looked like the one below.

This is a Monroe brand rotary calculator. I doubt that I could use one today, but back then I learned to be pretty good at it. The calculations had to be recorded on large pieces of paper. I still have some of those calculations in my files. (But then, I also still have my first grade report cards too. I'm a bit of a pack rat.)

On the first day in the calculator room, we were all warned not to divide by zero. Recall that dividing any number by zero yields infinity. If a Monroe calculator was set to divide by zero, it would continue to chug until someone pulled the plug.

Before I went to graduate school, I invested in my own calculator, a Texas Instruments SR-10 model. It cost me $149, plus tax. The beauty of the SR-10, was that it could calculate square roots. Interestingly, I had to return my first SR-10; it had a missing decimal point in the display between the 1,000s and 10,000s. My roommate, an engineer, and I discovered the faulty decimal display when I could not figure out why my homework problem kept coming out wrong. Here is a picture of the SR-10. Note the square root button. The display was red LEDs. Here's a link to more information on the SR-10.

My roommate, the engineer, was an early adopter of a more expensive early calculator, the HP-35. He paid nearly $400 for it. The HP calculators used a different method for accepting numerical input: RPN or reverse Polish notation. I never liked having to use that system because it required me to learn a new way to think about math problems. Here is a link to a page on the HP-35.

The Texas Instrument calculators, on the other hand, used familiar algebraic rules for inputting data. I'm sure that alone led to many sales compared to the HP family.

Today, these calculator are only seen in museums. Statistical calculators, too, appeared and are still available today, but at much cheaper prices. Most statistical calculations now, however, are made on specific computer applications. SPSS, SAS, R, and Statistica are commonly used statistical computer applications.

It's interesting to me how quickly students (and faculty) adapt to new technologies. However, it seems that students are remarkably blasé about past technologies. So, I guess part of my job is to remind them.