Don't forget "you need to be good at math if you want to work with computers."

That seems like a more recent development. I think at least another generation and a half got in before that

Yeah, I (a millennial) experienced the no calculator era, but I have no recollection of people talking about needing to be good at math to use a computer.

But, I fell like that would be more accurate in the 80s and early 90s when PCs were just becoming a thing.

They told us that for nursing school then it was all middle school level ratio and proportion (admittedly with multiple ratio steps like when you've ratioed the right volume of the dose but then you need to convert that to the gtt of your drip kit). The only real equations needed were three (maybe I'm forgetting one) that you could just memorize for the week then forget again until next semester. Two were °F to °C / °C to °F with one inverted ratio +/- the constant. The other one was BSA with two variables but you don't have to solve for one or the other they're both just measurements you get from the patient and plug in.

...but then you realize that the only acceptable score on that test is a 100% (some programs will drop you if you get anything less than a 100% on the drug dose test after two tries) and that what nursing school is actually looking for is both accuracy and precision. You're doing a relatively basic but fundamentally logical, and more importantly highly repetitive puzzle 25 times in a row in an hour and if you make even one error you fail. I had to create a whole specific mental technique to beat my ADHD into submission enough to 100% that test (honestly half of what nursing school taught me was ultimately ADHD / attention management techniques, which it turns out is actually also most of being a nurse). Like the EMR does basically all of the math these days but being aware of where my attention is and why and how to nudge it where it needs to be has been suuuper useful.

Edit: BMI! That was the equation I was forgetting about. Weirdly it's mostly useful in population health but also if you're under a certain BMI on admission the EMR starts suggesting a diet consult every time I open that chart until I either document a reason to permanently override it or just put in the consult so that the dietician can immediately decide whether or not to start loading them full of protein shakes. Really important for the seniors if they go into the hospital with 0 chub they're probably not coming back out alive.

What generation are you? I was born in the early 90s and we got that in school

You're part of my generation, we were the last.

Mostly true. I have actually used some calculus (derivatives and integrals) to write some interesting queries for Prometheus metrics.

But that's pretty niche.

Interestingly, this phrase was really only plausibly used for about 33 years - the time between the first fully electronic calculator and the first smartphone.

Engineers with slide rules in their pockets

I almost wrote "calculator/sliderule/abacus" for that reason

Maybe I'm not remembering how they work correctly, but I thought sliderules and abacus...es...abacuses? abacii?... just helped you repeat operations and keep track of the work you'd done, rather than executing mathematical functions for you

Sliderules definitely do operations for you. The basic multiplication sliderule uses logarithmic scales to do multiplication by addition. Abaci (it is in fact a Latin word that takes the -i plural, but "abacuses" is generally acceptable) do just help you keep track, but I believe you can use clever tricks to mechanically simplify complex operations.

well, they were right. i do leave the phone behind at least a couple times a week when i go out.

Hmm... I think it was something like, "you need to be good at math if you want to be a computer programmer", and in some ways that remains true.

I mean, you don't need to be good at your times tables to learn javascript, but there are lots of transferable skills.

I'm playing around with some Geospatial data stuff presently, and the math involved is about as complex as it gets, but you don't really need to do the math just playing around with the data.

Born in '96.

I heard that a couple of times growing up; then my last math teacher in HS allowed me to write programs for solving problems on my graphing calculator and even use them during tests.

this phrase was really only plausibly used for about 33 years - the time between the first fully electronic calculator and the first smartphone.

Not even that long.

I went to middle school during the 80s, when calculator watches were a major hype (had one myself at some point).

Even back then, 40 years ago, none of my teachers would have used that phrase.
It was just too clear already, that technology was already overtaking the assumptions made by that phrase.

Is Texas Instruments even a company still?

It won't matter if they have it if they don't know how to use it. I have a coworker who I had to teach how to find the area of a rectangle.

Yep and they make a lot more than calculators, as I found out the other day. Was recently looking up desktop DACs (basically audio processors and amps for your PC) and a bunch of them had Texas instruments chips in them, to my surprise.

I don't remember being told that, only that we weren't allowed to use calculators yet, period.

Coincidentally we started to be allowed to use calculators around the first iPhone's release date. I don't think those things had anything to do with each other though. 😛

I have always been wondering if the memory of this phrase is another example of the "Mandela Effect", like the Monopoly guy's monocle.

It just sounds so plausible, as it is stylistically the kind of stuff that teachers often say and it fits so well as we all have first hand experience on how fast technology has progressed especially during the 00s.

But on closer scrutiny it just doesn't make sense.

And it was already pretty obvious to anyone really early that this wouldn't make sense.

During my middle-school years in the 80s, things like calculator watches already were the hype (had one myself) and widespread enough for school to have to establish rules to cover those.
Shortly after that, I remember credit-card-sized calculators that where intended to be put into your wallet to be common giveaways by banks.
And compact GSM mobile phones started to become increasingly widespread from the mid 90s.

I see only a tiny timespan that the phrase would have perhaps been plausible, maybe just ten or so years spanning from the early 70s to the early 80s.

And I myself am pretty sure that I first heard the claim and the phrase itself in some relatively recent (last 10-15 years) online posts, but never before.

Another '96er here. I had teachers in my last couple years of highschool mention how wrong the saying was. Notably my machine shop teacher said it A LOT my freshman year (9th for non-US) and retired my senior (12th) year while saying "I guess you actually will have calculators in your pockets at all times now". He wasn't even behind on tech, calculators just being one of the standard things enmeshed in something as ubiquitous as cellphones would end up, just didn't occur to him.

what class was the first to allow calculators? I wasn't allowed to use it in math until sophomore year of HS.

Some point in our seventh overall year of school, as I recall, i.e. during the school year in which we turned 13 years old.

It's unnecessary now anyway... In 2026, it seems math education is having a Renaissance, but meanwhile kids can barely read.

From doing geometry in 12 year old classes in 2002, to algebra in 14 yr classes, our experience never called for offloading the math onto the calculator. Whenever I'm helping my son with math homework I try to ensure pencil on paper is the first step we exhaust before any magical math steps.

It sounds like obvious old man get-off-my-lawn energy, but when I was growing up the kids running games on TI calculators were the ones who were curious and also tutored sufficiently to not have any problems with math.

That was never me, of course. I was too broke and ignorant to have a TI-84 until college, and only used it in one math class.

Nope, even the earliest mobile phones have had calculators built in (talking about commercially available mobile phones here, nor the suitcase sized monstrosities of the 80s).

They said it to us, even as I'd go home to my father wearing this watch.

A friend of mine built an interactive card-flipping in, I don't know, I think silverlight back in the day, and did all the 3D computation manually. While I stared at him in disbelief.

I think that was somewhere around 2010?

Even dumb phones had a calculator. Maybe around 1999 you should have stopped talking about calculators.

I run into less and less F these days, thank god. Worst conversion factor ever.

Did you keep it in your pockets? didn't think so, teacher was right then, uninstall your root drive now.

I'm hardly 30 and my 2nd grade teacher told us we'd never have calculators in our pockets. I have brought it up with a few friends and most have heard the same!

Teachers at my school in the early 00's were still saying it. One of the better maths teachers would add to it by asking if we really wanted to grow up to be stupid and unable to do such basic sums unaided.

I heard this line while wearing this in middle school

Upvoted for 'abacii', it's a very pleasing word and I'm going to be saying it all day now.

There are a lot of really fun maths videos on youtube about abacii and slide rules and all the cool things that can be done with them. (I was going to link you one or two but falling into the youtube distraction hole trying to find them is going to massively derail my day.)

I totally believe you that you have this memory!

But now take a step back and consider that each of those teachers you vividly remember saying the calculator phrase to you, must have had a mobile phone in their pockets, which at the time had exactly three apps presented prominently on the main screen: a calendar, an alarm clock and a calculator.
So why would they have said such a thing to you?

And still, you have that totally realistic and believable memory of it.

Like I also have the vivid, colourful, and absolutely undeniable realistic memory of the "Fruit of the Loom" logo having featured a cornucopia when we were wearing this brand in school.

I think the calculator remark memory being a Mandela-Effect artifact is not a totally unreasonable thing to suspect...

I have brought it up with a few friends and most have heard the same!

Well, that is not a indication that it is not a false memory, as the thing you describe is core part of how these kind of collective false memories are probably formed, by "social and cognitive reinforcement":

Scientists suggest that these are examples of false memories shaped by similar cognitive factors' affecting multiple people and families, such as social and cognitive reinforcement of incorrect memories

I have been e.g. affected by the (known) Mandela Effect false memory of the Fruit-of-the-Loom logo having had a cornucopia.
I have seen the clear evidence that it has not, but I still have the memory, which feels absolutely real.
It is a really strange feeling... No wonder it sparked the idea by some that these kind of false memories are spill-overs from alternate timelines or parallel universes :-)

Eh, "you're not always going to have your phone on you" was another thing that was said, and plenty of us now have jobs where we can't have/use a cell phone while working, so it's turned out to be pretty apt.

I was told that employers wouldnt want me to need to look everything up, which was the argument against open book tests.

Meanwhile, my job is BEGGING me to use Chatgpt instead of my expertise.

I was in elementary school ins the late 70s and early 80s. Second grade. Mrs. Anderson said it. And it made sense because the calculator at home was the size of a brick and you had to plug it into the wall with a power adapter. And it cost like $800 adjusted for inflation.

I had that watch while teachers told me that.

I am newgen enough that I was raised shittily with a cell phone that had a calculator on it. It sucked but it was there. And I was doing worst in math. Forgot which grade.

Teacher dropped the line (different language), I went "I literally do have a calculator in my pocket" and pulled out my phone still running an "Are you sure you want to quit?"ed game of checkers with me literally doing random moves without understanding the game and still winning, then she went "well, what if you don't want to bring it, or forget it at home?", I dismissed it (but retrospectively she was right), and then I lost the argument with the teacher asking me how I would handle a social interaction with a store cashier.

Maybe I lived in a poorer area, but growing up the only people that had calculator watches were the people who probably would have gotten beaten up and had them stolen. There was a long period of time that kids would say why do I have to memorize that, there is a calculator for it. By the time I was in college, it was already rapidly progressing to, why do I have to write down my steps, Wolfram Alpha can do that for me. For me, it quickly got to the point in math that a calculator wasn't really useful for tests to begin with.

I certainly remember the needing to be good at math to get into computers. Same with needing to be good at math to get into science. Let me tell you, the majority of scientists I work with are dogshit at math.

While we heard it said, and more often the more specific realistic version was that you wouldn’t always have a calculator on the tests through college, there is a few more proper reasons that still apply. Knowing how the equations work, as well as that they exist. You can look them up and will probably build an excel spreadsheet at work but even using AI today it’s vital that you can check the work. It also effects your brain development. If you’re running calculations in your head while doing them by hand it develops parts of your brain and eventually lets you think in math terms.
The effort required probably also does a good job of sorting people out of career paths. I don’t want planes flying around me that were “vibe calculated”

had a mobile phone in their pockets, which at the time had exactly three apps

At the time I was in school (90s to early 00s), cell phones were for making phone calls. There were no "apps." There was no texting, no camera, none of that. Smart phones came out the year I graduated high school. Before that, cell phones were not anywhere near as common as they are today. At a certain point, they were even a status symbol. My elementary school teachers definitely didn't have the money to afford something so fancy in the 90s.

The closest thing I had as a kid was an "electronic organizer" with no phone/internet abilities. That had a calculator and a calendar, but it was more of a novelty and a toy - not something I relied on or would bring to school.

Logic, or understanding math.

Commenter was referring to its youth in the early 00s, and by that time mobile phones were ubiquitous and thanks to carrier subsidizing also pretty affordable.

The mentioned (preinstalled) app functions already came up during the switch away from simple text based displays in the second half of the 90s (as well as the texting you mentioned).

You are partly right, though, before that time items where more of a "single purpose" type.
But even then, miniaturization and mass-production had already rendered the exact "You won't have a calculator in your pocket all the time" phrase nonsensical, with everybody typically having lying around several of the free tiny giveaway solar-powered calculators in bags and drawers.

I would guess that the original phrases the potential collective false memory is based upon, were something more like "you won't be able to use a calculator in every situation", which then got transmogrified over time by social reinforcement to the plausible sounding and much more exciting "You won't have a calculator in your pocket all the time" trope.

Somewhere around 40?

I goated the system. I wore one of those calculator watches.