What's your favorite calculator?

Proton Soup

mine was paid for with a small scholarship. otherwise, the highschool TI would have gotten a lot more mileage.

Redbelly98

My favorite calculator is Excel.

2nd favorite is any solar-powered scientific calculator, of the non-graphing type. If I want a graph, I'll use Excel and have the option of saving the graph for future reference.

For the last 10 years I've been using the solar version of this:
I also own a TI 83+, mainly because I tutor math and the TI 8x's are so pervasive in the American education system.

My dad got hooked on HP programmable calculators in the early 1970's, and used/played with them pretty exclusively until he died in 2006. He never really made the jump to computers, though he owned a DEC Rainbow for a little while in the mid 1980's.

SW VandeCarr

I just calculated the 12th root of 2 to 9 places in a fraction of a second on my old TI-30Xa. Can your brain do that?

Integral

Ha! I bought mine used for $175 in 1973, I also got a lot of use out of it. Right now it is in its hard case in my closet.

My current calculator is a HP 28s. This is the first graphing calculator, on the market in 1986.

Redbelly,
Sorry for the loss of your dad. I too "collected" HP calculators in the '70's . I had the 35, a 25, 33,34, 71b and the 28. I never owned the greatest HP calculator the HP41c.

Jimmy Snyder

1.059463094 I think.

QuarkCharmer

I just memorized this answer so my brain is able to do this next time.

zomgwtf

All of these old calculators seem incredibly tedious to operate.

BobG

1

My brain was smart enough to remember that your final answer shouldn't have more digits than the original numbers that went into the problem in the first place. Since the square root of 2 is less than 1.5 and I know the answer can't get below 1 no matter how many roots you take, that answer was pretty easy.

Getting 9 digit answers when the numbers in the problem only had 1 significant digit is one of the drawbacks of calculators. Ever since the introduction of electronic calculators, just about every math or science course now needs to start with a chapter about significant digits.

ArcanaNoir

Significant digits only count in science, not in math. Pi goes forever, and so does the square root of two, and every other irrational number. We can take them as far as we like in pure mathematics, regardless of the length of other numbers in a calculation.

SW VandeCarr

Yes. There's also a practical value to taking the 12th root of 2 to a desired level of precision. It's the constant multiplier of the fundamental frequencies across an "octave" (actually 12, not 8 tones). So taking a base frequency B and using [itex]B*2^{x/12}[/itex] where x is an integer [itex]0\leq x\leq 12[/itex], gives the fundamental frequency of the tones across the "octave".

I like Serena

Exactly, so in pure math we never need a calculator to calculate digits!
*Sigh*

Redbelly98

When pi comes up in mathematics or theoretical physics, it is represented as [itex]\pi[/itex]. In engineering or experimental physics, 3.14 usually suffices. In neither case is an infinite number of digits required.

hotvette

Wow, good price. I didn't even consider used. I unfortunately sold mine in 1984 for $5 in a garage sale (including original hard case, leather soft case, charger, and manuals). Big mistake.

glueball8

Aww you beat me to it...

Thanks to it, I don't know how to solve integrals by myself anymore. ==

Astronuc

HP-41CX. I bought that during grad school, ca. 1982, and I still have and use it.

Before 1982 I had a TI-SR51 and TI-58C.

zgozvrm

I've always been partial to Sharp calculators. The first calculator I ever had was a TI (natch). They were the only ones available when handhelds first came out - they had those awful red LED displays. In college, I found a Sharp EL-512 which was around $30 and was programmable.



That was the beginning of my love affair with Sharp calculators. I have yet to find an inexpensive (< $20) calculator that I like that beats a Sharp. They have plenty of functions and (more importantly) their keyboards are generally laid out better than those of other companies.

Later in college, I found that many of the "rich" students were using HP calculators with RPN. I found those intriguing and ended up buying an HP 32SII (also for around $30).




It, too, is programmable, allowing for much more complex programs (albeit, with greater difficulty). After college, I found a newer Sharp to replace my trusty old EL-512 which had broken. I got an EL-520W for around $20 which has become my new favorite.



It does everything I need (including complex numbers) and even does simple derivatives and integrals.

A co-worker had this horrible Casio calculator that was extremely difficult to use (even for simple calculations). I bought him a Sharp EL-531X which is very similar to my EL-520 (lacking some of the more complicated functions) for $10 at Office Depot.

Greg Bernhardt

I used to have that Sharp in the first image zgozvrm! Good times!