EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => Beginners => Topic started by: Electro Fan on March 28, 2015, 08:34:27 pm
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Just checking to see if current EE students (or professionals) have any favorite calculators or computer apps that you use to 1) solve general math and EE specific equations and 2) to format and publish/print the results?
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casio fx-570ms i tried to find it in appstore, failed, the closest look and feel i got is powercalc. no i dont need graphing calculator, i graph in excel or vb. i did install but have not found any use. presentation and report? screen swipe and bluetooth to word, this is 2015.
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1)
HP 35s
self-written RPN engineering calc on the PC
Mathematica
2)
numpy/scipy
Mathematica
LaTeX
(current BSEE student)
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used some apps on the iphone for a while (m48, i48 and some other 35 or was it 32?) but the touch is really not very nice to use in the long run.
Ended up buying a casio 991es-plus which I have on the desk. Also have a spare HP48G that I bought cheap and repaired - sometimes it's really nice for it's symbolic capabilities but it's also very convoluted. I wish those re-released HP calculators were not so stupidly expensive.
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HP-35S in RPN mode in the living room.
HP Prime for the great solver. Also as an emulator on my PC and laptop.
HP-48G in my lab in RPN, used this one for the solver before the Prime but the Prime is much more user friendly and a lot faster.
HP-15C in my bedroom, and as emulator on my ipad.
HP-35 just for fun because it has such a cute LED display.
HP-95LX
Casio FX-115 (2x) bought them many years ago before I knew HP calculators
Casio FX-880P
Casio FX-790P
I used the sharp equivalent of the FX-880P from my uncle during my study, many moons ago. Got one a few years ago complete with plotter but the set was beyond repair caused by leaking batteries.
By the way, there is a very big calculator topic already.
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I'm a big fan of the Casio FX-115ES Plus for general computations but for the heavier stuff I have an old HP 48g which is capable of doing any 3D graphing I need. Though I would recommend picking up the HP 50g these days (not a fan of the Prime.)
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MuSIMP (CP/M)
TI-59
CASIO CFX-40
HP-48GX
TI DERIVE
Now, I have a TI nSpire CX CAS.
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Windows+C (configure the key combo using AutoHotkey) --> calc.exe (scientific mode)
Data series, Excel or MATLAB.
Anything else I can either plug into Google Search (e.g., units and constants, simple ratios and arithmetic), or Wolfram Alpha, or write out on paper. Big equations to write down are worth doing in a CAS (computer algebra system), take your pick.
Writing: LaTeX (or just plain text in Notepad)
Tim
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if it can't be done with a 1$ calculator it ain't worth doing ...
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+1 to Google search, put units in too, and if your expected unit or equivalent pops out, then you know you got your formula right too.
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if it can be done with a $1 calculator you probably should have done it in your head
in circuits if I need more accuracy I usually have gone to the PC loaded with free SciLab/Octave and LTSpice - which is a "engineer's Spice" - worth learning the quirks
some are now claiming Python SciPy, NumPy and SymPy in iPython Notebook are a replacement for many other specialized math sw tools http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/jrjohansson/scientific-python-lectures/blob/master/Lecture-0-Scientific-Computing-with-Python.ipynb (http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/jrjohansson/scientific-python-lectures/blob/master/Lecture-0-Scientific-Computing-with-Python.ipynb) but I don't think SymPy is really there yet - Macsyma/Maxima is available in Sage Math - but Sage runs in VirtualBox on windows - wxMaxima can work without the VirtualBox
other free Computer Algebra: Giac/XCAS which is used as the symbolic math engine in GeoGebra - GeoGebra dynamic geometry environment is actually quite powerful despite the primary/high school math orientation - and you can import datasheet graphs as images and then do geometric constructions/math right on top of the image
paid math sw get pricey quickly but is often worth it to your company if the sw features save months of engineer's time
MatLab, Maple, Wolfram Mathematica all go way beyond the freeware offerings - particularly in specialized packages for signal processing, control, image analysis...
I used to use Mathcad - version 11 was the best for me, the last with the Maple symbolic core - but it changed to muPad - I never transitioned to the later versions as it broke my existing symbolic worksheets
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self-written RPN engineering calc on the PC
here (https://github.com/cpavlina/lerpn), by the way ^-^
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HP-15C (Real and emulated on the iPhone)
HP-32S II
Sharp PC1360
Sharp PC1600
And just for fun, the TI59 emulated on the iPhone
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I have the HP35S as well as an HP48 (lovely keys but the display is missing one line of vertical pixels now) and the HP49G (horrible keys - I hate it compared to the others).
There is one thing that really, really annoys me about the design of the HP35S and I wonder if I am alone in finding this very annoying - when it is set to showing all digits the display is such that it can't show the whole number - it is missing the last digit - so you have to scroll and the missing digit is often the most important one i.e. the exponent!! |O
I don't like the fixed point displays because they aren't flexible enough but with the normal display I'm forever getting an answer and wondering if it is E-2 or E-3 for example - ok I can get the answer by scrolling but why couldn't they perhaps have the least significant digits scroll instead or make the display a little bigger or the font a little smaller. I have had the calculator several years and this feature is as annoying as ever - in fact it probably gets a bit more annoying as time passes.
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I use Wolfram Alpha for math stuff, and in my Ti89 I have an app call EE Pro