I told him that I had left my calculator in the lab downstairs. Finally, I told him to use the computer. After five minutes writing a two line program, compiling, and running it, he got the answers. That event reminded me of a story I read long time ago. It was about a society many years into the future where people don't use paper anymore.
Every calculation is done with a computer or a calculator.
That story probably has some truth in it. Twenty years ago, most junior-high students could calculate square roots without a calculator. If this decay rate remains constant, twenty or fifty years from now, most people may not know how to multiply or divide. It may even get worse that people forget how to add and subtract. I decided to try taking the square root of a number on the paper.