Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for January 11, 2022

What? Me first?

311,440

Using a calculator does not show you can do math. It only shows you can use a calculator.

He’s partway to the engineering dictum:

Faster, better, cheaper — pick two.

As an Instructor Navigator in the Air Force I ran up against a lot of students who used calculators in flight to do their celestial calculations – a lot of math and table look ups and the numbers went on a convenient form. They also used them to do some of the other inflight calculations. Used to make them fly at least one mission without the calculator. It was interesting to see some of them get hopelessly lost. I had one say I couldn’t do it, so I did the process on the top of an inflight lunch box without the form. We also had a nav computer that was essentially a circular slide rule made out of aluminum. With practice, you could do a lot with them.

And how is it you are in high school, Baldomero, when able to do basic math back from elementary and middle schools?

Give him a few more years and he’ll be trying to use this one as a bar bet.

5x any number ending in 5…will always result in a number ending in 5.