engineering statics calculator

BobG

Personally, I've found a good calculator is invaluable for some engineering courses. The Pickett N4ES is particularly good for electrical engineering courses due to the dual base logarithmic scale (a lot of problems require base 10 logs). It also solves quadratic equations very quickly using a visual iterative process.

Pickett N4ES
(Edit: Don't forget to move the parts using your cursor. This really works.)

Of course, it doesn't help all that much in statistics, since it doesn't do sums. Then again, Microsoft Excel can do anything you want to do for statistics and most of what you want to do for any other course (provided you simplify the calculus problems by hand into something you can enter into Excel). Edit: Or, alternatively, you can buy a Picket N525-ES that's specifically designed for statistics.

Pickett N525-ES Stat Rule

Stevedye56

This thread keeps getting funnier and funnier by the post!

tacosareveryyum

I've always wondered what some of my profs would say if I showed up to class with a slide rule......

BobG

Depends on whether you can actually use all of the scales on it or not. The older ones are impressed as hell, while the younger ones barely have a clue what it is.

Of course, buying the TI-89 and not being able to figure out how to convert from rectangular coordinates to polar coordinates isn't very impressive either. I'm amazed at how many people fork out over a $100 dollars for a calculator and don't know how to use it - they don't know that most of the constants they'll need are already stored in the calculator or that they can add any additional constants that they need, they do strange things that lock up their calculator to the point they can't even turn them off, they can't find any of the functions they need, etc.

It's funny when someone comes in at the start of a class with their new, better calculator, and after a couple weeks they're using their old calculator because they don't have time to learn the new one and do their course work at the same time.

Of course, eventually they do learn how to use the calcuator they buy, but buying one on the first day of class makes for a traumatic life.

Moonbear

I think that if they're going to require an expensive calculator, then they ought to teach you how to use it for the things you need it for too. Otherwise, yeah, you're better off using the one you already know how to use than shelling out a bunch of money and wasting more time finding the functions on the calculator than it would take to solve the problems by hand.

Chi Meson

I miss my HP 11C
http://www.hpmuseum.org/gallery/10series.jpg
It died in 1998 after being chewed by my dog. I had it since 1981.