Author Topic: What calculator do you use ?  (Read 173321 times)

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alm

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #50 on: April 17, 2012, 09:42:11 pm »
(Almost?) all scientific calculators have an engineering mode that will make sure the exponent is always a multiple of 3, so 10,000 would be returned as 10 E+3. Is this really any harder to read than 10 k? I convert between k and 103 without even thinking about it.

The only advantage of 10 k + 10 mili that I see is that it saves one keystroke compared to 10E3 + 10E-3 (the units both being shift functions), since you don't have to type the minus. This might be a slight advantage if you often work with numbers < 1, eg. 10p + 1n - 1000a.
 

Offline siliconmix

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #51 on: April 17, 2012, 09:42:31 pm »
casio fx - 82.needs a clean under all the buttons mind.i cant do any math with a "3" in it until i clean it.three's are overated anyway imho  ;D
 

Offline nanofrog

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #52 on: April 17, 2012, 10:51:17 pm »
Started with Casio way back, but then I discovered the HP11C, and haven't looked back since. Still use it daily, and picked up a 50g to replace a broken 48SX a few years ago (like to be able to see the stack + has units & unit conversions).
 

Offline meffe

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #53 on: April 17, 2012, 11:19:51 pm »
Speaking of Casio, i also have this marvelous "calculator": http://www.vintagesynth.com/casio/vl1.php

The best about HP are their tutorials and manuals. They are fantastic.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #54 on: April 17, 2012, 11:27:49 pm »
For 30 years I carried an FX98 as my go-to Casio until I found out it was rare, and losing it would be irreplaceable, if not terribly expensive.  So several years ago, I loaded up on FX-260s and leave the FX-98 at home.

I last saw an FX98 sold on eBay for over $300.
For Casio-nuts:
http://www.casio-calculator.com/Download/Collectors/CasioCollectors.html

I sold my BROKEN Casio CFX-400 scientific calculator watch for $400 cash to someone in the US before the whole ebay collecting craze took off.
That model is worth even more now, up into the 4 figures for a watch that I paid $20 for at K-Mart back in the 1980's.

Dave.
 

Offline caroper

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #55 on: April 17, 2012, 11:51:16 pm »
I think my first calculator was the Facit 1114J http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/eec/calcpics/Facit1114J/view.jpg
I think i was still faster with my trusty Guessing Stick (Slide Rule for the young players), but it got me interested in the whole electronics / logic / computers field. The rest is history as they say :)


Offline Kilroy

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #56 on: April 18, 2012, 12:21:47 am »
Not sure I understand you buddy.
To input that sum in my old Casio fx-570CD would take 8 strokes :P

ie:5 shift 5 + 5 shift 6 =

Exactly. But they don't make that puppy any more. Which is a shame.
The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; some do both; and the wise does neither.
 

Offline m12lrpv

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #57 on: April 18, 2012, 12:27:07 am »
I started with a HP11c which is all I could afford in Uni, then on to a 32S and then a 32SII.

The lifespan of my calculators increased significantly after I stopped working as a Surveyor and my current calculator (my second HP32SII ) is now 20 years old and going as strong as ever.

One of the greatest advantages of RPN is when people ask to borrow your calculator  :)
 

Offline Ajahn Lambda

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #58 on: April 18, 2012, 12:55:45 am »
You guys are spoiled.  Here's mine.







j/k   ;D






I have two dead TI graphing calculators, killed while going through engineering school:  a TI-86, and a TI-89.  By 'die' I mean their screens malfunctioned and the keypads became non-functional.  One's screen died in the middle of my statics exam; I beat my fist against its face to get it to work, which made for a hell of a scene in the middle of a test, I assure you.  I am probably the most-careful person in the world with his electronic devices, so the fact that they died within two years of purchase really made me hate TI.  How many years went by before they updated or replaced the TI-86 or TI-89 models?  A decade?  Ridiculous, especially given that the cost to the end-user almost never changed, yet the technology in parts used became ubiquitous, if not obsolete.  It was almost as if TI refused to let the early-1990s die.  I found them to be non-intuitive, clunky, slow, inefficient (they go through batteries like a mofo), but worst of all they were required for a few classes.


That said, the best calculator I've ever used is my Casio from 1997-ish.  I'm away from home right now, so I can't look at it and tell you what the model number is exactly, but it has a three-color screen, a teal case, and it's in the CFX-9850 series.  It looks much like this one, from the Wikipedia page:









That was a great calculator, despite being a bit slow and REALLY hating cold weather.  But the ubiquity of the TI units, and programs written specifically for engineering with it, pushed me to begrudgingly buy a refurbished TI-89 Titanium.  Happily it has held up well, but I keep it in a zip-up padded case anyway.  It seems to be much improved over the regular TI-89, and I enjoy using it as long as I don't have to bust out the manual to finger out TI's silly coding and key sequences for operations.


My short list of most commonly used calculators is as follows:

1. Excel -- much of what I do is done easiest with a spreadsheet and graphics
2. Win7 built-in calculator (whoever thought to make it do binary and hexadecimal, THANK YOU!)
3. My Android -- there is some great calculator software out there now!  I use Arity, RealCalc, TechCalc, and a couple others.
4. MATLAB
5. Mathematica
6. MathCAD
7. That TI-89 Titanium
 

Offline slateraptor

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #59 on: April 18, 2012, 01:25:39 am »
Sorry I don't follow you question.

If I was to put in 0.005000005 [shift] [7] and then [=] it would show 5.000005 K. note (key 7 being Meg)
and the same with 5000005 [shift] [5] [=] 5.000005 K. note (key 5 being milli)

For the HP 35s, 5.000005 K would be displayed as 5.000005e3. If I wanted to display this output in milli-units, I would press [<--] [ENG -->] once to display 5,000.005e0, and again [<--] [ENG -->] to display 5,000,005e-3

So suppose you've just performed a calculation whose result is 5.000005 K. Now suppose you would like to easily determine what this number is in milli-units. Does the calculator have a dedicated feature for performing this task similar to the [ENG <--] / [ENG -->] f'n on the 35s?

I've noticed that the engineering mode for every calculator I've used would "auto range" the engineering exponent based on a coefficient which lies between 1 <= coefficient < 1000, e.g. an absolute result of 0.1234 would be displayed as 123.4e-3, whereas an absolute result of 1.234 would be displayed unchanged.
 

Offline Lightages

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #60 on: April 18, 2012, 02:38:39 am »
OK, enough of these wimpy "calculators". Its time for the real men to step up and use one of these. Just two of my sliderule collection. I have 53 of different types. These two are specialty electronics rules.
 

Offline nanofrog

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #61 on: April 18, 2012, 02:58:24 am »
One of the greatest advantages of RPN is when people ask to borrow your calculator  :)
Hadn't really thought of that one as I haven't lent tools in years (too many things never returned), but good point.  :D
 

Offline slateraptor

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #62 on: April 18, 2012, 06:04:45 am »
OK, enough of these wimpy "calculators". Its time for the real men to step up and use one of these. Just two of my sliderule collection. I have 53 of different types. These two are specialty electronics rules.

Nice. I can only imagine the look on a professor's face if a student were to bust one of those out in the middle of an exam. :P
 

Offline cybergibbons

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #63 on: April 18, 2012, 06:12:38 am »
The Casio graphics calculators have a display mode for engineering notation using m/n/p/f/k/M/G, and a menu that lets you use the function keys/soft menu at bottom of display to enter them. I admit to using them if the maths I'm doing is all framed in terms of those units.
 

Offline lavo-1

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #64 on: April 18, 2012, 06:34:08 am »
Sorry I don't follow you question.

If I was to put in 0.005000005 [shift] [7] and then [=] it would show 5.000005 K. note (key 7 being Meg)
and the same with 5000005 [shift] [5] [=] 5.000005 K. note (key 5 being milli)

For the HP 35s, 5.000005 K would be displayed as 5.000005e3. If I wanted to display this output in milli-units, I would press [<--] [ENG -->] once to display 5,000.005e0, and again [<--] [ENG -->] to display 5,000,005e-3

So suppose you've just performed a calculation whose result is 5.000005 K. Now suppose you would like to easily determine what this number is in milli-units. Does the calculator have a dedicated feature for performing this task similar to the [ENG <--] / [ENG -->] f'n on the 35s?

I've noticed that the engineering mode for every calculator I've used would "auto range" the engineering exponent based on a coefficient which lies between 1 <= coefficient < 1000, e.g. an absolute result of 0.1234 would be displayed as 123.4e-3, whereas an absolute result of 1.234 would be displayed unchanged.

If the answer is displayed as 5.000005 K then pressing [ENG] will give 5000.005, and again [ENG] will display 5000005 m.

I can also look at a display and understand, read the display as 5000005 -03, but just find imputing into this type of calculator in ENGINEERING mode so simple and quick. 8)
I just need to try to fix the dam thing, as I miss it so much :'(
 

HLA-27b

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #65 on: April 18, 2012, 08:30:21 am »
OK, enough of these wimpy "calculators". Its time for the real men to step up and use one of these. Just two of my sliderule collection. I have 53 of different types. These two are specialty electronics rules.

Nice. I can only imagine the look on a professor's face if a student were to bust one of those out in the middle of an exam. :P

This is exactly what re-kindled my interest in mathematics :D  I damn needed to learn how these worked, so found an emulator program, found a book and started slidin' right and left. As someone who was exposed to slide rules after being exposed to graphing calculators I might say that the slide rule is by far the most intuitive and most inspiring math tool of them all. Just for this reason alone it is worth learning how to use one.


Here is a free slide rule emulator. Thanks to the NZ guy who wrote it.
http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~timb3000/

Here is a virtual Pickett N909-ES Slide Rule
 http://www.antiquark.com/sliderule/sim/n909es/virtual-n909-es.html
(Hint: reverse the rule and try out the unit conversions  ;))
« Last Edit: April 18, 2012, 08:45:07 am by HAL-42b »
 

Offline Lightages

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #66 on: April 18, 2012, 08:35:47 am »
This is exactly what re-kindled my interest in mathematics :D  I damn needed to learn how these worked, so found an emulator program, found a book and started slidin' right and left. As someone who was exposed to slide rules after being exposed to graphing calculators I might say that the slide rule is by far the most intuitive and most inspiring math tool of them all. Just for this reason alone it is worth learning how to use one.

You certainly can see the relationships in the calculations you are doing. With a calculator when you see an answer to 10 digits, it looks impressive and must be right with such accuracy. Except, you might have a result that is wrong to 10 digits!
 

Offline steve_w

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #67 on: April 18, 2012, 10:58:50 am »
HP 15C till my wife washed it.  Dont ask
So long and thanks for all the fish
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #68 on: April 18, 2012, 04:15:34 pm »
I use a somewhat battered Ti58, which works well enough ( but needs the keyboard stripped and cleaned) and have the odd HP and Casio around. TI is on permanently, running off a 3.6V supply as the batteries died and I did not get a charger when buying it at an auction.
 

Offline dfnr2

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #69 on: April 18, 2012, 04:47:18 pm »
HP15C - one at my desk, and one at the bench.  Great form factor, and very resilient.  Also useful: Python (with iPython / SciPy), Google, Wolfram Alpha
 

Offline im_a_human

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #70 on: April 18, 2012, 05:44:13 pm »
My calculators i use are the Casio FX-992s which i got about 12 years ago, and the Texas Instruments TI-83 Plus Graphic Calculator i bought about a year ago. I also have a program called Graph Viewer on my Nokia N86. (www.graphviewer.com) which does advanced graphing of equations etc.
 

Offline TerminalJack505

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #71 on: April 18, 2012, 06:27:06 pm »
I have a TI-Nspire graphing calculator.  I don't really recommend it.  It's not a terrible calculator but it's battery hungry and the display is hard to see.  I have to hold it at a specific angle relative to the light just to read it.
 

Offline cybergibbons

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #72 on: April 18, 2012, 07:03:22 pm »
I think the major advantage of a calculator should be that it lasts for ages on one set of batteries. And not take any time to turn on... Both of which the nspire fails at...
 

Offline rf-loop

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #73 on: April 18, 2012, 07:49:21 pm »
After I get first new HP calculator 25C, I have owned many different HP's but one is still in everyday use. It is 15C. I get it when it come to markets. (also I have many other models, some 34, 28S, SX,GX48 etc and also 71B with HP-IB and disk drive, but this one 15C have been so handy that it have been this everyday "work horse" and it continue, I hope forever.  Its keyboard work as dream. (today there is available some kind of cheap looks like copy but is really far away fron original guality. )
Of course one reson is RPN what keeps me married with Hewlett-Packard (exept that original HP company and all what was good have destroyed. It is true american shame how it may happend. Pity. )
I drive a LEC (low el. consumption) BEV car. Smoke exhaust pipes - go to museum. In Finland quite all electric power is made using nuclear, wind, solar and water.

Wises must compel the mad barbarians to stop their crimes against humanity. Where have the wises gone?
 

Offline slateraptor

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Re: What calculator do you use ?
« Reply #74 on: April 18, 2012, 07:52:08 pm »
The retards who designed the Nspire need to be fired with a quickness...all the button real estate at their disposal and not even the common courtesy to make the keypad a proper querty layout.

 


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