pi day
Little daughter took the challenge and seems to have internalized something like 120 digits of pi. When I pulled out Abramowitz and Stegun she remarked that seeing pi in there had been one of her motivators. This led me to point out the paucity of decimal digits actually provided in the old books of tables, and how rapidly a 30-year old HP calculator could outdo the books.
Then she noted that the computer grading for her language arts class this year uses the same fill-in-the-bubble scanning technology as her math class last year. I started to show her images of IBM punch card technology which had been used for multiple-choice bubbles when I was in school, and other applications of the old days of programming by punched cards. I explained that I had learned to read my name on IBM cards. Not totally impressed as she pointed out that a sliver of silicon could hold far more data, she moved on. She extracted a piece of math homework from last year which she had not understood and proceeded to work it through.
Then she noted that the computer grading for her language arts class this year uses the same fill-in-the-bubble scanning technology as her math class last year. I started to show her images of IBM punch card technology which had been used for multiple-choice bubbles when I was in school, and other applications of the old days of programming by punched cards. I explained that I had learned to read my name on IBM cards. Not totally impressed as she pointed out that a sliver of silicon could hold far more data, she moved on. She extracted a piece of math homework from last year which she had not understood and proceeded to work it through.