Certainly do. I was useless at maths but learned to use one easily. We were all encouraged to have them.
I was often whacked over the knuckles with one in maths class. The teachers were bloody sadists in my day
I was always led by psychological thinking during maths lessons:
“Tom has six apples and Brian has 15 bananas.....”
At this point I was wondering what on earth Brian wanted 15 bananas for, was he over compensating for a neglected childhood?
Needless to say never understood the point of Maths.
Algebraic equations are for people who can't add, subtract, divide or multiply numbers. Makes them feel clever in a special kind of way. I wasn't an admirer of algebra either.
Never used a slide rule. Having skipped through the attached video clip it looks pretty straightforward. Mind you I'd probably have fallen asleep if the bloke in the clip had been a teacher of mine.
Well let's hope I listened and learned in the maths lessons or there will be a few houses in Suss ex falling down anytime soon. Loved working out amounts of material, loadings and best of all profits.
I was dreadful at maths at first mainly because I was turned off by the kind of mundane, everyday questions you illustrate above. " If Fred has 17 bolts at 3p each and his nuts cost 1/2p each, etc, etc" My mind used to go blank at this point. As soon as I discovered Geometry and Algebra though I thrived, it was like my brain was made for it.
Here is my slide rule and case, still in good working order since the first time I used it, in the mid sixties probably. Might put it on e-bay just to see how much someone is willing to pay for it. Not selling though!
Just think. Some of the greatest Engineering feats of the early 20th Century, must have been achived using calculations off a slide rule, the accuracy of which which, by todays standards, was vary coarse to say the least. Aircraft, Cars, ships Buildings. - It worked then