Interesting reactions. Pugugly is of course right about the need for a quick check to see if the calculator's result seems about right, but ten years of university students before I retired has left me staggered by the number who cannot perform such a mental rough check, so atrophied has become their arithmetic.
Here's what prompted my initial post. Members close to the Blackpool/Preston area will know of the small village of Warton that lies between the two. I was in Warton over the holidays and encountered a chap with car and caravan who stopped me and asked for directions. He had towed the caravan from Leeds using his sat nav, but couldn't make sense of the place. It turned out that his system had taken him to the wrong Warton -- he needed to be at Warton near Carnforth, some 50 miles away.
OK, he should have double-checked before setting off, but anyone who was giving a map even a cursory check to verify the sat nav would have spotted the error long before he was 50 miles adrift. He had no map, no awareness of the geography, just a blind faith in technology.
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PS: The one or two members who see me as an old dodderer opposed to this marvellous device should please read my post again. I use sat nav myself -- but still keep the maps.
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Mind you they banned calculators from my O level Maths. I had a very nice Sinclair programmble jobbie - just the things for those quadratic equations, never used a quadratic equation after my o levels - what are they for ?
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They are for teaching to students of mathematics, who will teach them to students who will teach . . .
I 'did' quadratic equations thirty years before the Sinclair calculator, and I haven't found a use for them either.
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"They are for teaching to students of mathematics, who will teach them to students who will teach . . ."
Sounds like the raison d'etre for teaching geography too....
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I use my PDA sat nav very regularly and I'm not ashamed to admit it, but I realise that you can rely on it blindly.
I learned my lesson when I was sent to an unfamiliar town to find an address on Railway Road. I duely entered the details into TomTom and I arrived outside number 10 Railway Road, which was a house and not a parcel depot as I was expecting. After some messing I got the A to Z out and discovered there were 2 Railway Road's in the area - the Sat Nav couldn't seem to distinguish between to two.
I find driving to an unfamiliar place far less stressful when you've got voice instructions guiding you. If I know 150 yards before a roundabout I need the 3rd exit, I can concentrate on the positioning the car and watching the road rather than the road signs which must be much safer.
Maps are still very useful and I can read a map as well as anyone else, but to carry round street level mapping for the whole of the UK (and Europe for that matter) in a device the size of a calculator has to be progress. I make extensive use of maps in my job, but these days its electronically using Arc GIS and a SmartBoard rather than an old OS map we've had to order, wait a few weeks for it to be produced, get someone to hang it on the wall and get a load of acetates cut so we can write on the map. The electronic way has numerous advantages - one click to change the map to an aerial photograph of the same area, the ability to get the details of all property in a selected area on the map etc.
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In the future, I think maps will be something you discover when you're retired, like going to local shops.
I have always been bad at following maps while driving, and reading the signs and comparing to a map on the move is not easy.
I have found with the satnav, if you use it to get somewhere, you can't find your own way back, as you aren't looking at landmarks and junctions so much, so if it broke before your return journey, I think you may be stuck!
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"Sounds like the raison d'etre for teaching geography too"
So where did we all learn to mapread? And if you had done geography you would have known what a tsunami was before last week!
"In the future, I think maps will be something you discover when you're retired, like going to local shops."
I don't have satnav so may be on shaky ground here but I would have thought it very useful in a specific context but that (say)it couldn't replace OS maps as a detailed guide to the topography of a particular area or, at the other end of the scale, a good atlas.
"I still love maps, love looking at the wonderful names of places in this fantastic country. Husbands Bosworth, Nedging with Norton, Ashby de la Zouche, Ugly, Wimbish, Wendens Ambo,"
For some interesting place names try this site _ be warned - some are rather rude!!
www.i-r-genius.com/rudeplaces.html
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I thought long and hard, for several months, about buying a satnav, but it is easily the finest so-called gadget on my car.
It enables me to complete at least one more appointment every working day, by not wasting time stopping to re-read the map in a strange area for the 17th time and then, having followed someone's incorrect directions (or followed incorrectly someone's directions!) by getting completely lost (again). I actually teach navigation so I'm quite familiar with maps and map-reading, but for getting from A to B to C to D and home again with minimal fuss it is just unbeatable. Of course, every system has a few quirks, but no map can tell me what my arrival time will be, how to divert quickly and safely around unfamiliar back-roads if a road is blocked or closed, how to reduce my blood pressure by not getting lost and turning up late for an appointment, how to keep my eyes on the road instead of glancing down too often to follow a map on the passenger seat, where and by how much the road bends on a route I don't know, where every side-turning is, a lot of time spent route-planning the evening before.........the list is just endless. I'm afraid I can think of no drawbacks with satnav (which in my case is an ipaq with TT3) - it is just brilliant. After 8 months and countless trips I still smile when pulling up right outside a strange address 60 miles away without having made a single wrong turn. However, I do still carry maps and a print of Streetmap for the day it decides to have a sulk.
If all this makes me 'feeble of mind' then so be it. But I happen to think it may also help me to be a safer driver.
CG
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Maps depend on being able to map read and drive, daylight (to spot landmarks) - if not decent lighting to illuminate road signs - never having a foggy day in a strange area (and I mean fog and not mist). A Local Authority that cares about clarity in their signposting and maintainence. Too many variables for a stranger in a strange land. I loved Geography in school but leanrt far more about ground nut production in Africa than about genuine map reading. (we learnt that from an enthusiastic teacher in primary school).
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>>you would have known what a tsunami was
The japanese word for tidal wave which is trendy to use in english conversation.
I think the point with SatNav is people not learning to do it the manual way first. I use a calculator a lot, but I can do it in my head, or even on papaer if its difficult enough.
I use SatNav, but I can do it with a map and compass.
We're probably going to get generations who use SatNav but can't read a map. I'm just not sure if it matters.
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">>you would have known what a tsunami was
The japanese word for tidal wave which is trendy to use in english conversation."
except that (I hope) you would have been told that it was nothing to do with tides but was a large destructive wave caused (usually) by earthquake or volcanic eruption. "Tidal" wave is therefore inaccurate. I think it comes from the japanese for "harbour destroyer" or something close to that.
Rather dismissive of you to refer to it as "trendy" when it is the preferred term of oceanographers and seismologists.
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"I'm just not sure if it matters."
And that is the whole point - its called evolution. The Romans didn't need maps or atlases or a laser sight to build their roads dead straight. Why carry bulky maps when you can carry the whole lot on a palmtop ?
By the way tsunami means "Harbour Wave" in its native language.
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By the way tsunami means "Harbour Wave" in its native language.
>>
The nearest we get is the tide coming in as in
www.environment-agency.gov.uk/regions/midlands/434...e
The Severn Bore and Trent Aegir are naturally occurring tidal waves.
The Severn Bore has been known to reach two metres in height. Its average speed is 16km per hour.
Sat nav would not have allowed me to track the Severn Bore.
A good old O/S did. So horses for courses.
Having travelled to see and hear the Severn Bore on many occasions it obviously tiny compared with the Tsunami and is not destructive.
I would like a sat nav but cannot justify the cost especially as I have O/S maps and, I have to admit, a good map reader... SWMBO.
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A valid point about bulky maps, Pugugly, but then we don't carry all Europe. Just the ones that cover the trip, and they don't need to be street level. Half a dozen of the newer Michelin 150,00 series will cover a month in France, and are there to browse over in the hotel for next day.
I take Mark's point also, but one day the system will fail, and that is when someone may realise that those lost skills can matter.
But I think the strongest appeal is that made by several contributors -- safety, when you don't have a navigator alongside you and can sometimes be in the right lane even before the sign appears. A blessing in poor visibility?
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A thoughtful response, Quinny, which echoes my own feeling that sat nav has formidable benefits -- it saved our bacon getting out of Rheims one day, and that was only my Garmin etrex linked to a laptop and Microsoft Aurotoute, but there is a still a place for paper. The most effect use seems to be to balance the two, as other contributors have suggested. Use its benefits, but keep a sense of gegraphy -- essential for touring in my view.
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"and are there to browse over in the hotel for next day."
And you can't beat that can you. I have some French OS type maps we had for a walking holiday in 2000. And they are absolute joy to behold.
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And unlike the OS, they are so cheap that it's no great hardship to buy new ones now and then. The IGN (Institut Géographique National -- their answer to our OS) series can sometimes have odd little inaccuracies, though. Perhaps its one of these protections against copying.
A pity as well that they never adopted our simple and effective grid reference system, which links so well to a hand-held GPS. The French Lambert system, which appears on only the IGN orange large-scale series, is nothing like so effective. www.ign.fr/
Our library at Stripey Towers now contains the entire country in IGN 100,000 series as well as 80% (getting there!) of the UK on 50,000, all the latter bought secondhand.
Incidentally, my reference to equations being taught only to teach was just a little irony. I do feel that when the time comes that you have forgotten whatever it is you were taught -- the quadratic equations, the geography (sorry, Mark), the history, the physics, whatever, then what remains is education. Tony Blur seems unaware of that. Ooops -- any more of this wandering off motoring and I'll get moderated . . . is senile decay accepted in mitigation?
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I forgot to add that on the IGN link I supplied above you will find GPS compatible maps on CDROM of both 100,000 and 25,000 series.
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The French maps are not, IMHO, cheaper than OS. They're certainly cheaper though - French mapping really isn't up to the standard of the OS. They are not a work of art; they are full of inaccuracies as you note. (Not deliberate errors to avoid copying - you only need the tiniest of little quirks, unnoticeable to the user for that.)
Second hand maps always strike me as false economy, owing to the rate at which they change. I happened to be up in the Peak District last week with a 1961 1:63,360 OS map that seemed to show railway lines where now there are only sheep...
But back to the topic, I have in my car a large scale Philips road atlas, I think it's 1:100000. It is superb for finding remote farms. It is also brilliant for finding alternative routes around traffic jams using back roads (unlike most roadmaps)!
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Technically I'm sure you're right, but in practice I find no problem. Mine are 50,000, mostly Landranger, 10 to 15-year old and bought for a quid or so (around £6 new against £2.50 incidentally for the IGN maps). Collect a couple of hundred for the hell of it, and that's a lot of money. But of course, if money's no object . . .
I find them perfectly adequate, in that off the motorways and A roads little of the landscape has changed significantly for centuries. Surprisingly, there aren't even that many new roads (wasn't there a recent estimate of 10% since the war?) and a modern road atlas fills in the gaps. Mostly it's a bit straightening and widening.
I can use a ten-year old Landranger with a Garmin GPS (I cycle incidentally), and the excellent grid reference system gives me a perfectly satisfactory fix.
In 40 years of bumming around France -- and living there -- I've never found serious discrepancies in the IGN maps, just the odd little quirk that, true, you don't get on OS.
What does puzzle me is why the OS do not seem to have the Landrangers available on GPS-compatible CDROM -- or even CDROM at all -- as the French are doing. Maybe they have, but I haven't found them. It seems odd since, if I remember rightly from my time with the Land Registry years ago, the OS was first with both metric and digital mapping.
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On re-reading that, I can see that my "money's no object" comment could be read as a barb at Mapmaker. That was not my intention, and I unreservedly withdraw any such suggestion.
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You sure don't like poor old Mappy today do you Stripey
;-)
--
Adam
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I do seem to have been a little unforunate! No, Mappy's a splendid fellow -- I'll just take a pill, and have a nice lie-down.
An edit button here would be nice.
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