When those tasks would have slowed class down — the teacher might not have wanted us to spend time drawing a curve when the real lesson was interpreting it — our teachers did it for us and put it on the class TV. Calculating statistical values was also done quickly with a $17 Casio engineering calculator.
TI-83s existed, but there was a culture in my school (ironically, a private one) that graphing calculators were a status-signaling more-money-than-sense thing. Too bad that such a culture isn’t ubiquitous.
— Sent from my iPhone XS
I have tried to explain it to my wife, but she can't grok it. I'm going to have to buy one from fleaBay to get her to understand.
There are online virtual slide rules like http://www.antiquark.com/sliderule/sim/n909es/virtual-n909-e...
The key concept is understanding how logarithms work.