lucky me! i had "new math" in the early '60s, and so i was learning binary and octal when LBJ was president (still in elementary school, some new math even as a preteen..
I remember clearly 2 lessons, one on pi, and one one plotting circles, elipes, parabulas and hyperbalas..
these same fomulas came up in news reports, for space flights, and i remember thinking how cool it was, that i could understand what the engineers where saying.. this was fun math, and the crap about the shop keeper who was selling mixed dried fruit, that was 10% raisens, and 15% prunes, and so many figs, and prunes cost so much, and figs cost so much, and how much did he would he charge for his mix dried fruits...Or problem that involved the total time it took a train to complete its journey, if it went this speed for this many miles, and this speed for an other few miles, and stopped this long at this station..
Who cared? but plotting the arc that the space capsule traveled? or finding the orbit? that was exciting! that was math of the future, not math of the past!
