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Calculator bit the dust.....
17

Calculator bit the dust.....

Calculator bit the dust.....

(OP)
Hi all,
I am on my third TI-85 and the display is failing :(. I looked at other TI models including the TI-83, TI-84 Plus C SE and TI-89 Titanium. I was able to emulate those models on my phone to see if I'd like them. I still prefer the TI-85, and really want something that does conversions easily. I found the conversion programs on the above models to be cumbersome.

What I would like a calculator to do:
I like a large display and history (like TI-85)
trig and scientific functions
x^2 button square root
^ button so I can do whatever root I need (like x^(1/4))
Conversions, including ft^2 to acre and gal to ft^3 (love the conv menu on the TI-85)
solve quadratic/simultaneous equations easily

It would be nice to have something to do decimal to fraction or add feet and inches and give answer in fraction form.

Should I get an old TI-86? Do they have better longevity than the TI-85?

I do like the RealCalc app for android. Anyone know if it is based on a calculator model?

Anyone have the TI36x Pro? CANON F-792SGA? Looks like the TI36x pro conversions are very limited.

I know a lot of you like the HP with RPN, but I'm not looking to go that route.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I loved, loved, loved my TI-85, and when its screen bit the dust, I tried to find exactly what you're describing. Seems it doesn't exist anymore (or didn't, 3 years ago). Now, I just use my TI-30xs from my PE days, and it works just fine: it has pretty much everything you're asking for, minus the conversions and function solving. I love how easily it switches decimals to fractions. I don't do much eq solving and I got a free conversion app (or I GASP do it by hand!).

If you find one that you like, let us know!

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Reverse Polish is good.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

2
Real engineers only use RPN :>
I recently went back to an HP11C after the new HP's have gotten too fancy.
Hard to to beat it.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....


TI-36X. Never even came close to enjoying RPN.....

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

My recommendation is to begin and end your search with the HP35s, as shown here.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-35S-Scientific-Calcul...

It is the simplest RPN calculator currently made and it's the only RPN calculator allowed in the FE/PE/SE exams. You can even hit a button to covert it to a tradition "algebraic" calculator for people who prefer that. To be clear, there are three makes of calculators allowed in the exams so you don't have to have that one for the exam, I'm just saying that it's the only one allowed that's RPN.

As for the difference between RPN and the other type...RPN saves keystrokes, is easier to use, is faster and more powerful...in my opinion. Hey, with this calculator you can't go wrong: you can try RPN and if you don't like it simply switch the mode to the traditional algebraic.

Yes, it has two registers while I prefer only one (like EE above, apparently). But if you want one of the older models that has only one they go for $200 or so on ebay, last I checked. For the $150 price difference I can live with the second (annoying) register.


RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Whoops, I just saw the part where you said you didn't like RPN. Fair enough, I wasn't trying to sell you on it, per se.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Casio FX-115ES PLUS is my vote. It's usable for the FE, PE, and SE and has both battery and solar power with a reasonable display size and a nice keypad.

I like a large display and history (like TI-85) ---- Yep
trig and scientific functions ---- Yep
x^2 button square root ---- Yep
^ button so I can do whatever root I need (like x^(1/4)) ---- Yep
Conversions, including ft^2 to acre and gal to ft^3 (love the conv menu on the TI-85) ---- Nope. It has some basic conversions but they're mostly imperial to metric
solve quadratic/simultaneous equations easily ---- Somewhat basic

It would be nice to have something to do decimal to fraction or add feet and inches and give answer in fraction form. ---- It will do decimal to fractions but I don't believe it will do feet-inches.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Seems like in this day and age, having all those functions on a calculator just makes it more cumbersome. I can see needing it for a PE test, but if I want to do a conversion, I can just type it into Google. HP11c is about as simple as it gets.
RPN is def. faster. Time is money!

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I just dug in and saw that my TI-30xs can in fact solve functions. Who knew! And with none of that RPN silliness. (ducks for cover)

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

HP 15c on my desk, HP 11c emulator on my android. If I need more, I go to a computer.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

CP41CX for the last 33 years. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

2
plain jane casio fx-991MS here. It can do cubic equations if you've reduced them. I don't need more than this thing. If I do I just write an excel or mathcad sheet to solve it

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Archie264,

The HP 33s is also permitted on the PE/SE test.

I would agree that the HP 35s is a very functional calculator and it also has algebraic input, should a person desire such a feature.

Myself, I use an HP 41CV made in 1985 and still running strong.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

It is sad that you can't buy something equiv. to an 10c, !!c or 15C anymore. I know HP re-introduced a limited run of 15C's a few years back, but they were made in the China and the keyboards were reportedly not very good. Now they are super expensive on ebay.
Funny how they keep producing the 12C financial calc, however.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

HP 45, HP 41C, HP 41CV, HP 32SII, HP 15C, HP 12C and HP 33S....all work except the 45...but I'm getting the batteries fixed for it too. Also have an HP41CV app on my phone and an HP 35 (original, not 35s) emulator on my laptop.

ExcelEngineering...for the financial calculators, I've never found anything close to the 12C...that's why they still produce them.

Anyone get the idea I like RPN?

One might ask why I have so many calculators. One would have to see my office to understand.....there are things in my files, boxes and stacks that get lost for years, only to re-surface. I once found one of my HP 32SII's closed up in a 3 ring binder on a bookshelf.....2 years after I had replaced it with another. Am currently looking for my 41C...probably in a box somewhere! Probably next to my slide rule.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

My slide rule is normally closer than my calculator

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Ron, it's like Phil Gramm said about guns; "I have more than I need, but less than I want."
I have a 15C, 32II, 48GX, a 35 (where is it?) and a Prime (which I haven't figured out yet).
Take a look at: http://www.hpmuseum.org/hpmuseum.html

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

3
Understand RPN did I never. :)

I'll second TehMightEngineers recommendation for the Casio fx-115 series. I used to have a TI-85 with a lot of programs, but then had to get used to a cheapo calculator for the PE & SE. I got so used to it, I never went back to the 85.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I am still humping an old fx-115 myself that I bought from the student store in college. Solar / battery powered.. haven't even bought batteries ever! Made in China, designed in Japan.

who woulda thunk.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

JC...thanks for the link...I had forgotten that existed. Cool.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I am convinced that using RPN is better for your brain on a daily basis. With no parentheses keys, you have to think more about the order of operations and the stack. I'd love to get my kids to use RPN, but I prefer they don't even use a calculator until college.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Another vote for the Casio fx-991ms.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

"Try this; it never wears out, doesn't need batteries and you can drop it/tread on it and it will still work."

Yeah, just don't drop your cigarette on it...

Started with
TI SR51
HP27C
HP41C
HP11C
HP11C -- thought I lost it, like Jayrod, but found it, so there's 2 now

The TI nSPIRE is a somewhat obscure, but powerful calculator. It has a modular keypad that allows for emulation of the TI89.

TTFN
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RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I've been using a HP 15C since 1983. My then girlfriend, now wife, bought hers in 1985. Both still in use every day.

Mike Lambert

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Well, have you taken it apart to spot any obvious issues, like a loose display connector or magic smoke escape point?

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Talking calculators to engineers is like throwing red meat to the sharks.

HP11C- Been using it for 32 years and it's still going strong (although I did have to change the batteries three times)

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Funny, my girlfriend and I had a debate last night about the merits of solving multiple variable equations through "advanced" mathematics or by iterative analysis. She was all for accurate solutions by solving for the variables but I proposed that setting up a simple spreadsheet or mathcad sheet where you input one variable manually and then compare the calculated variables until they matched your input as a more easy to verify and simpler method which is usually faster as well but sacrifices accuracy and automation.

Anyway, we then discussed calculators and software that did such things for us and I thought of this thread. How many people, when faced with some math problem beyond basic algebra, actually do the math or do you "brute force" the equations like I do? If the former, do you employ any advanced calculators, mathcad (which is great for solving for variables), or something similar which can do the math for you and solve for the multiple variables? Or do you choose to write it all out by hand without letting a computer do the legwork?

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Ahhhh, I love WolframAlpha and really should use it more often during work. Great tip.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

RPN all the way sorry... Give it a chance, back in university I used to think the same that it was a bit harder to understand so I didn't bother. Then in one exam I decided to use it as there were a lot of calculations with multiple brackets which are a real pain in algebraic mode. I finished the 3hr exam about 1 hour early much to my surprise, which was directly attributed to the efficiency of using RPN and a few programmed equations.

This was on a HP49g, I currently use a HP50g after that died an unexplained death. I couldn't imagine using anything else now to be honest. It does everything you are after, and doesn't have to be used in RPN mode.

I can't even function on an algebraic calculator anymore as it is to be honest a completely different thought process, I guess it's like my workmates when they pick up my calculator for a quick calculation and they are horribly confused by RPN to the point where they hand it back to me to do the calculation for them!



RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

"...and they are horribly confused by RPN to the point where they hand it back to me to do the calculation for them!"

Love it...

Been using it for so many years, I just cannot use a TI.

TI operation: 4 X 5 =

HP operation: 4 enter 5 X

Still 4 keystrokes to get the answer...

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

And that's why I find RPN confusing. when someone asks me what's A times B I think of A x B = ??, not A enter, B times. it's so backward.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

and if you can't figure out the order of operations and basic algebra easily enough to use a standard calculator then you probably have bigger problems in your life you should be figuring out, like what you did to screw up grade 6 math.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

TI 3 + (4x3)= 8 strokes

HP 3 enter 4 enter 3 X + 7 strokes


Once you get used to it you will never go back

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

4 enter 3 x 3 +

Six strokes

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

yes always have had an HP calculator. Bought this latest HP35S not sure 6 or 7 years ago. The only thing I don't like about it is, in this day and age, why HP couldn't have gotten a better display. Perhaps it's just my eyes. If someone hands me an ordinary calculator I hand it back and go get mine. Not sure how many times I've punched in 5wl^^4/384EI but it's likely in the 10's of 1000's.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

PS: Excel, I was trying to reinforce your point, not counter it. With equations that have parentheses I try to start within the parentheses to save a stroke. Another thing I do is that if the equation contains pi I try to start with pi as that saves a keystroke as well.

Another advantage of RPN over some types of algebraic calculators is that it shows intermediate calculations, which can be handy.

As you said, once you get used to it you'll never go back.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

knelli,

I just noticed that one of your criterion is "...solve quadratic/simultaneous equations easily..."

For that you'll need a calculator that can handle matrices. In the old days the HP 15c and 42s would do that, and do it easily. They still will, you'll just have to buy them off of ebay, though. But, I'm sure there are all kinds of wiz-bang calculators that can do it now, I just don't happen to know which ones they are.

Also, you can set up an excel spreadsheet to solve for simultaneous equations if you want. See here:

http://educ.jmu.edu/~drakepp/spreadsheet/howto/mat...

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Excel, on this TI89 your equation was only (6) strokes
3 + 4 * 3 enter... seems close :D

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Eric,

Ok, now try 3 x (4+3) on your TI. With RPN it's still 6 strokes.wink

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

RPN was OK in it's day... I use an HP48GX at home and a TI89Titanium at the office... used to be the stack architecture of the HP machines was the fastest... not necessarily anymore... my TI89 has a Motorola 68000 processor in it... OK for a handheld. Archie... whether it's 6 strokes or 7... at the end of the exercise, I have a clean display showing 3 x (4+3)... so at least I know what I entered... rather than have just the answer...

Dik

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

...but no intermediate results...

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Archie, But why add unnecessary parenthesis if not needed :D. The TI knows order of operations... now the earlier 5wl^4/384EI will cause problems on the TI without parenthesis. But I did recently get a RPN to try out, the 89 does have a clean algebraic display when complete, similar to MathCAD... but only two lines

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

So now we have proof. HP users do it with fewer strokes.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I'm not trying to convert anyone here, I'm just wondering if there is anybody else who doesn't see the point of using a calculator when you have a computer with a spreadsheet program sitting on your desk?

Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services
http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Well Doug, I for one still use the calculator a lot... For some stuff it is simply faster to not drop the pencil, and look only a few inches away rather than completely change focus...

I suspect this one may divide down the lines of type of engineer and type of work.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Quote:

Well Doug, I for one still use the calculator a lot... For some stuff it is simply faster to not drop the pencil, and look only a few inches away rather than completely change focus...

That's why I use the computer :) (with "not pick up the pencil" substituted for "not drop the pencil")

Quote:


I suspect this one may divide down the lines of type of engineer and type of work.

Probably, the mechanical guys here seem much more computer oriented than the structurals.

But as with all these debates, the important thing is not the tools you use, but the way you use them.

I'm reminded of a presentation that I went to recently, by Prof. Michael Collins, who attributes the loss of feeling for gross order of magnitude errors to the replacement of the slide rule by the calculator, rather than the introduction of desk-top computers.

Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services
http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

M^2... where's the fun in that?

Dik

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Msquared, the hp users' wives must be devastated! tongue

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Engineering Eric,

Not to beat this dead horse too much but I think you might have missed my point there. If you type those numbers I posted into an algebraic calculator without using parentheses or the memory feature I think you’ll get the wrong answer.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

@ MSquared:

You should make some shirts

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

...but I don't think it'll be us HP guys that buy them...jester

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I guess it certainly would not help your social life

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

oh how quickly we degenerate...

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Archie, I understood your intent. I guess with the TI89 it knows order of operations. So you do not require the parenthesis... If are comparing a simple aleg. calc to RPN sure but not a complex TI89 to RPN (The 89 does partial deferential equations for those that want it).

I wonder if that shirt would be more popular than the "keep calm, the Structural Engineer is here" post from last week?

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

You can lead a horse to water, but they still stink. bigcheeks

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I guess I'm missing something. How could you enter both of these equation into an algebraic calculator without using parenthesis and get the correct results?

3 + (4x3)

3 x (4+3)

Rather, I would think that your calculator would revert to the hierarchy of operations and return 15 in both cases instead of 21 in the second case. Now if it was done in two separate operations, that I could see. But then the dastardly keystroke count goes up and we know what a danger that poses to civilization. surprise

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Archie,
I missed your " now try 3*(4+3)". you are correct my friend. both return 15 not 21 if no parenthesis are used. touché

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Well I’m glad we can have fun with this and I think thread proves, if nothing else, that we’re real engineers. Who else would put this kind of energy into discussing calculators? (Hopefully no one.)

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

All this TI vs HP/RPN discussion will be a thing of the past anyway. Common Core is teaching a new generation of future engineers how to really do math! thumbsup

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Common Core? No, I don't Google....

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

@CEL, It's an American Democrat thing...

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

PMR06,

Now there's a topic! I know a high school math teacher who's been forced to adopt that system and it's caused her no end of grief. It's not really about teaching so much as it is about political indoctrination. For those so inclined you could check out an article in today's "TAS" that documents that. (I've abbreviated the publication so as to not be too overtly political and to make it available to only those with an express interest in reading about it; I know this is a technical forum. It's still worth knowing, though, what's being put through under the guise of math education...)

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

2
A few years back, my daughter was doing homework and blurted out "Man- I love my calculator". I told her that she was a natural for engineering. She chose to pursue her Phd in immunology instead- What a waste. She could have been productive in something that really matters instead of trying to prevent pandemics and whatever else those people do.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Well...maybe preventing a pandemic might be a good thing...bigsmile

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

My first calculator was the TI SR50, The alternative was the HP35. HP says it cost $395 but I remember it being more because they took rooms in the big hotels and gave a big sales pitch, the SR50 was $175 mail order. This was when I was making about $7.50 an hour, a good wage at the time. Years later, the boss of one of our analysis groups insisted that I see how much better RPN was. He was correct but my mind and fingers were already trained to work with algebraic without me having to think too much, if I tried to switch would have needed a new calculator and it would have slowed me down.

The SR50s were being ripped off in the mail, I ordered four of them for me and some colleagues, when the third mailing arrived the price had dropped to about $125.

Michael.
"Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved." ~ Tim Minchin

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Viva TI-36x Solar! We are one. Errr 1.

"We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us." -WSC

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Vote in for the Casio fx-85GT plus. Solar and battery powered, good display size and a "replay" function (which is handy).

The main selling point for me, is that it presents the equations similar to how I would write them by hand where as RPN just spits numbers at you with blatant disregard of social etiquette.

RPN also sounds like some sort of stress related injury.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I've still got my trusty Casio fx 3600P - P being programmable with 36 steps! Must be clocking on for 30 years old(!!) Forgotten how to do any of that, but it does a lot of what you were looking for but none of that reverse polish stuff or history. Lots of storage for constants though.

My motto: Learn something new every day

Also: There's usually a good reason why everyone does it that way

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I have a TI-36X that sits on my desk, but every now and again I break out the beast - my TI-92 Plus. And it never fails that someone walks by and stops to ask "what is THAT?" I'm going to cry when it breaks, but it's been through high school, college and field tested and it's still spitting out integrals and graphing differential equations.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I have been an HP user since college and cannot use anything but an RPN calculator. My current calculator is an HP 35s.

When I starting my career 20+ years ago, the president of the firm had an HP calculator that was hinged, like a book. I think it had keys on the left hand side and a screen and more keys on the right hand side, or vice versa. I don't know the model number of that beast but it was an impressive looking device. He is retired now but I suspect he still has that calculator.

I haven't seen this much discussion on this site since the last ASD versus LRFD debate.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

If I recall Hokie, the HP35's had gold circuitry.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Hokie93

That was a HP 28s (there might have been another version HP 28c?) that was a clam shell type case with keys on both sides and a 4 line screen that had graphic capability. It was a pre-curser to the HP 48s & HP 48g. It had many functions and menus like the 48 but never really caught on.

Jim

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Hey, where are the Electrical Engineer members who were responsible for designing these things? Isn't some Engineer going to come on and defend some horrible piece of crap as being undervalued and a diamond in the rough???

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I'm waiting for someone to post this :¬

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-Nspire_series
n-spire looks nice and plenty of features (like usable graphs and usable integration if you need it). but i suppose they are rather pricey.

first calc i ever had was hp20s. used it until electronics went haywire and didn't produce reliable results anymore.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

My calculator life motto is: Get the $8 solar calculator and don't buy the replacement insurance. Go ahead and pour my coffee on it. Lose it in my desk pile. Buy a few more. Pass out extra $8 calculators to my children and friends.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

My HP41CV is 26 years old and still working perfectly! I hope it never dies!

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....


Quote (sturr)

My HP41CV is 26 years old and still working perfectly! I hope it never dies!

I purchased my HP41CV in 1982 - first year at uni - and used it every day for a couple of decades until the circuitry went bad. I sent it to a guy in Florida to see if it could be repaired but if could not. I then purchased a HP 48GX but it was no replacement for the 41.

Then a few years ago I found this app and purchased it for $25. Has all the module packs, printer...use it every day. The only app I have paid for!
http://alsoftiphone.com/i41CXplus/

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

If you've had 3 TI-85s then I'm sure you know this but if you hit 2nd-UpArrow it increases the contrast on the screen. Occasionally the contrast setting drops to zero for some reason making the screen look like it has died. 2nd(Shift/YellowKey)-UpArrow increases the screen intensity. 2nd-DownArrow lowers the screen intensity.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I love how big this thread is!

I always used the TI-85 and TI-86, but when the PE exam came I switched to the Casio fx-115ES and I've never looked back. I miss all the old functions of the TI's, but they were just so slow. Takes 1-2 seconds to turn on, sometimes a second to run a calculation, while my simple Casio is instant. When I'm using the calculator all day those delays just add up and I couldn't go back.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

It used to be that to check the speed of a calculator you would have it calculate 69! (i.e. 69 factorial...I'm not being emphaticbigsmile). Now I believe it would be 253! except that there's no longer any point to to doing it.

Sturr, getting an HP41CV would almost make it worthwhile to buy an iPhone.bigsmile

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I bought my first Casio fx-5000F back in 1988, misplaced it soon after that, bought another one and then found the first one. Since then I have enjoyed 26 years of delicious security knowing I had a back-up for my beloved calculator. I only recently brought the newer one to work and retired the older one. The older one still works though. Whew!

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

If you're at all interested, there's a free app for an Iphone that installs a HP 48GX. The buttons are painfully small, but besides that, it's pretty slick. I started my HP journey after the 41CV, so I don't have any special loyalty to it.
I found it by searching the app store.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I'll tell you why not to use RPN: Because TI had a big plant in the town where the college was, so by golly, we're all going to use TI Calculators!
It's basically like driving on the left vs right, whatever you get used to is best and any other way is wrong.

As to the calculators- I used a Casio fx115ES. It has some drawbacks. Basically, though, anything too complicated goes on Excel anyway.

The Rule of Shoes is that if you find some that you really really like, you'll never see them for sale again, and that seems to be the way with calculators, too. After a bit, you get used to whatever it is.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I use an HP 50g. I tried to convert from RPN to a TI 83 or 84 graphing calculator, can't remember which now, several years ago after my HP 48g died and could not retrain myself away from RPN. Gave the TI to a friend and bought the HP.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I've been entertained by reading this whole thread and now feel compelled to get on my soapbox:

-- You only need a calculator if you are going to take a NCEES exam of some sort. Otherwise...

-- If you are young enough to not have some certain calculator that you already own and would defend with your life then I'm sure you have a smartphone. RealCalc cost me $3.49, runs on my phone and tablet, has up to 50 lines of stack memory, does conversions, does all the expected operations of a standard scientific calculator, and will switch back and forth between RPN and Algebraic by changing a settings checkbox. And the display on any modern touchscreen device makes every calculator ever look like something that could have been dug up in Egypt. AND, next phone or tablet I get I can still install that app without re-buying it - just like my WolframAlpha app. RealCalc has relegated my ol' school HP48 to a dusty drawer, but still, I don't use the app unless I'm out onsite, at lunch, etc. Why? Because...

-- As IDS said above, why do hand calcs at all anymore? Even when I'm doing a really rough and quick first pass to get a feel for feasibility, beam size, etc, I use Excel. That way every number is permanently recorded, fresh grads can see how you arrived at something instead of watching you murmur with a calculator at the white board and just draw the results, and I can always come back and change one number and watch the effect ripple through every other line of calcs. Really, is there any reason to not use Excel, MathCAD, Matlab, etc?

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I realize that none of you logically-minded minimum-keystroke people would do this, but I do occasionally find myself adding zero to a number on the calculator or multiplying it by one just because that's what the equation says and it's mentally easier to follow it through.

Realistically, though, if you REALLY wanted to minimize keystrokes, you probably wouldn't be typing line after line into a computer, now would you?

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

When I started at the local power company in 1973 (for $700 per month) I shared a Singer/Friden 1162 with an office mate. Looking on the WWW I see the list price for the calculator back then was $1195 (nearly double my monthly salary). It was a 4 function calculator and I think it was RPN plus it had a square root but no trig functions. We had a Smoley's Tables book for trig that we shared. It had 4 stacks and a CRT display tube. Later we got an HP-45 and later a HP-97. Some HP-21's came and later HP-25, then the HP-25c with the continuous memory. The sideways HP-15C came in and lastly I got a HP-41CV which I still use for calculations. I was going to night school and got a personal HP-67 to carry to class and exams.

I love RPN and can use algebraic calculators if I think about what I am doing but I don't do the parenthesis. Been doing RPN for so long it just seems easier.

_____________________________________
I have been called "A storehouse of worthless information" many times.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

@ theonlynamenottaken

Why would you use excel for rough beam sizing?
You could do it on a calculator in 10 seconds.
FWIW, I don't feel that anything beats the real keypad of a calculator. Smartphone is ok for field use.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I just looked at some hand calculations from 1965. Everything was there. Assumptions, moment distribution, sketches, etc. When your grandchildren need to look at a structure you designed 50 years from now, will Excel be around?
Wnen everyone started getting personal computers (20 years ago), Dbase was the bomb. It did calculations, sorts all in the DOS format. What do I do with those floppy disks with those Dbase calculations on it?
We, as engineers, need to be forward thinking enough to keep records that are usuable in the future. If you do all your work in Excel, are the formulae visible? Can the work be replicated? Is it on your C: drive, soon to crash?
I'm not saying that we need to go back to those well laid out calculations of the 1960's and slide rules. But we need to consider calculations as a deliverable, same as the drawings.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

@ JedClampett

I literally start and end every project in Excel. Type out a few paragraphs of description of the project, list all applicable codes, list info given from the client, list all assumptions, and leave gaps for screen shots I take from GTStrudl, AutoCAD, LPile, etc. From there I import worksheets from other Excel files I made in the past, like Wind 7-10, or the Concrete Calculator one I attached here. That way its just like an old school set of hand calcs, flowing from page to page in the right order. All my spreadsheets show all formula, or when doing something complicated atleast provide a text explanation, "parallel axis theorem including transformed steel". When all is said and done you print the entire workbook to PDF, and then to actual paper, incase the world decides to stop using Excel.

The point isn't to sidestep the old way, its to turbo charge it. I didn't use to be this way. What changed me was working as an expert witness and needing to document every single number, and working with GTStrudl.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I sometimes wonder how a Hp 50g calculator today compares to a mainframe computer back in the 1970's.

I remember those mainframe monsters that programs were written by mark sense cards (a modification to punched cards).

Also inverting a matrix was a big thing back then only a mainframe could do that sort of stuff.

Makes me feel so old.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

This is a great thread...but it made me realize that I have not used a real calculator for work -- ever. I only ever needed a simple calculator or the occasional spread sheet.

Should I be happy or sad that I have not used the high level maths from my college days? ponder

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

I've tried calculators on the smartphone and I hate them. Because there is no button to feel, I have to go slow or I make mistakes. I swear I hit 4 but my phone thinks I pressed 7 and the whole calculation is invalid. It ends up taking me twice as long to do a simple calc as it would with my calculator.

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

@jvvse YES...

RE: Calculator bit the dust.....

Have had my TI-86 since high school. So running on about 12 years now for a ~$90 investment. Maybe more. Have one row of pixels that went out a couple years ago but otherwise still works great.

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