Recommend a good pocket calculator

In general, many (all?) TI calculators are higher-priced because TI has pushed them into being the "standard" in education. It's been a while since I checked, but there was a time when the only calculator you could take into an SAT or ACT exam were specific models of TI calculators. Like I said, it's been a while since I checked, or priced TI calculators. My dad brought home the first (HP) calculator I ever saw in the 60's. It did the 4 basic operations, as I recall, using what would be called "prefix" notation (operand first, number <enter> number<enter>), and not much more. It was about $600 and required custom batteries. I think that was almost 10% of his salary at the time. That was the first step after the slide rule. At least things have improved. : )
 
homebrewed said:
The one negative about spreadsheets is the trig functions expect or return angles as radians. There are radian<->degree conversion functions but you gotta remember to use them, and know which one to use.
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All you have to remember is 2PI radians =360 degrees. So divide by 360 or 2PI and you get
1 degree = PI/180 radians or
1 radian = 180/PI degrees.

Then for example, PI/3 radians = PI/3*(180/PI) degrees = 60 degrees.
As long as your angles are acute, or between 0 and 90 degrees, there won't be any sign issues in your sine issues! : )
 
Or use degrees() and radians(). Available in my spreadsheet, which is mostly Excel-like.
 
When I was studying engineering we weren't allowed to use calculators only log tables and or slide rules, so I never bothered getting a serious calculator, on the odd occasion I need to do some calculations I use the calculator in my android phone , works good enough for me.
 
Downunder Bob said:
When I was studying engineering we weren't allowed to use calculators only log tables and or slide rules,
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Not formally so for me, but the $400 for the first HP scientific calc (this was in the 70's) was an effective disqualification. The slide rule I had was good enough for what was needed. I remember a bucks-rich student using his calculator to give an answer down to 4 decimals (3.1412 or some such) , and the professor said that 3.1 was good enough. So much for $400 vs $40 (and that was for a fancy slip stick) :)

BTW I still have mine.
 
homebrewed said:
Not formally so for me, but the $400 for the first HP scientific calc (this was in the 70's) was an effective disqualification. The slide rule I had was good enough for what was needed. I remember a bucks-rich student using his calculator to give an answer down to 4 decimals (3.1412 or some such) , and the professor said that 3.1 was good enough. So much for $400 vs $40 (and that was for a fancy slip stick) :)

BTW I still have mine.
Click to expand...

I have my dads slide rule. He sent men to the moon with that thing.

Literally:cool:
 
I have a collection of TI, HP, K&E (slide rule) but in the shop I most often go to a LARGE Display with Large Button 4 function calculator because it is easy to use with oily fingers. When I need more than 4 functions It is ether a TI 36x (solar) or Excel. I was in the Slide-Rule club in my high school in the Mid-70's I think that it was the last year that they had a slide-rule club.
 
They made me use a slide rule for chemistry in 1982. Just barely passed the class, everyone else had circular rules and I was stuck with my dad's old straight one. He was a chemical/aeronautical engineer and insisted I take that class, I wanted to take "Machine Tool Technology". Wish I had been able to do both but now I understand why he insisted on chem....
 
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