Thanks guys. I just got back from Staples. I bought a Casio fx-115ES Plus. Looking forward to using my new toy.

Apparently your calculator doesn't support engineering notation as a display format.

 

Hello,

There are also a lot online calculators available for electronics and other subjects.
Have a look at the following pages:
http://www.daycounter.com/Calculators/
http://www.martindalecenter.com/Calculators.html

Bertus

 

Casio FX80/82 would be my vote.

 

Ummm...guys....there is literally nothing that can't be done with a smartphone today -- including scientific calculators of all types, free and not free.

... except feel the key move.

 

... except feel the key move.

Haptic feedback, to me, feels just as effective.

 

Haptic feedback, to me, feels just as effective.

That pun somehow feels like a Zen Kōan.

 

I used to be a whiz with my HP-11 or -12! Loved the quality and the RPN. But between a laptop, iPhone and a desktop when I need it, I don't use calculators much these days. All these devices can run calculator apps - with many free options to suit your needs.

My principal reason for getting away from calculators in general was the permanence and flexibility of using Excel instead. I don't want to work out a calculation and just get a single value - I want a documented history of the calculation and usually a table and a chart of the function involved. Then when I come back 10 years later, I can pick up where I left off.

 

They have pop up ads and are clunky to use.

Not if we're talking about iPhones.

 

They have batteries that go pop.

 

What Calculator would you recommend for a newbie hobbyist that will meet my needs until I know what I am really doing?

Some things that are attractive to me include;

1. Multi-line display
2. Solar power
3. Anything educational (If there's one that actually help you understand advanced calculations better, that would be awesome.)

Thank you!

Hi,

It all depends on how much math you had already and how much math you intend to learn over the next 5 to 10 years.

If you havent had much math and dont intend to learn much more, then a cheaper calculator is probably good enough.
If you had a lot of math (algebra, calculus) then you want to go for a high end TI or HP calculator because then you can do engineering stuff right on the calculator, with the benefit of doing symbolic calculations rather than just numerical, and that includes up to 2nd order differential equations symbolically and higher order numerically.

On the other hand, there is a lot of software for the PC computer these days too, so you may not even need a hand calculator. I rarely use my TI89, but in the past i used to use my TI85 every single day. I was able to calculate many things even with the TI85 in a few seconds that would have been hard to do on paper by hand.
I do offer a caution though and this is very serious: If you go to a high end calculator MAKE SURE that it can use and display UPPER and LOWER case variables. Without either of these (just one or the other) the calculator is much less useful because you can not type variables like:
R1, R2

you have to type:
r1,r2

and that is very very very annoying.

Case in point: The TI89, which ONLY allows lower case variables!
Therefore, dont get a TI89 or you will be very unhappy (unless they upgraded the software perhaps for that model).

When i had my TI85 it was great because i could type variables like R1, R2, C1, C2, but when i got my TI89 i was shocked that it could not do ANY upper case variables. I could not figure out how a company like TI could do such a ridiculous thing. It's just plain dumb.

As a side note, TI and HP offer computer versions of their calculators too so you can get an emulator for either one. For the TI you have to own the calculator though in order to download the emulator software.

 

I'll throw my 2 cents in. I also like RPN and use my old HP28s from 1986. The batteries last about 5 years in it.

The smart phone is also a nice idea. I downloaded an HP11c calculator emulation app. It looks identical to the old HP11c I used before the HP28s.

Maybe the young people won't appreciate these HP calculators, but they are ideal for quick engineering calculations.

To truly have some power, a student version of Matlab (costs 50 bucks) is great because it does matrix math and complex math much easier than you can do on a hand held calculator. Add the symbolic toolbox and run the command "mupad" in matlab and you get a symbolic calculation tool that is so easy to use.

Also, if you don't want to go with Matlab, the matlab clone called "Octave" is free and does most of the things you can do in matlab.

I have Octave installed on my Android tablet. It works great.

 

I have used an Excalibur desktop RPN calculator for years (having owned an HP-25, HP-15, and HP-42).
I find RPN, which has only an Enter key, much easier to use then an algebraic calculator which requires the use of parenthesis and an = key for any type of complex calculation.
(I find it interesting that typical algebraic calculators use the RPN function sequence (number is entered first and then results are displayed when key is pressed) for most functions (transcendental, etc.) other than the four basic arithmetic functions).

The Excalibur displays 4 numbers of the RPN stack and has extensive banks of functions including Scientific, Statistics, Business, Conversion, Geometry, Computer Sci, Complex Vector, Physics, and Custom.
Selection of any of these banks brings up a bank of keys with anywhere from 12 to 40 dedicated keys for the selected bank functions.
You can also program custom keys to perform a programmed function which can consist of any arbitrary sequence of other functions.
For example I've added keys for (V>dB), (dB>V), (1/2pi*(X stack)) [for RC frequency calculations], (nBit) [number of bits needed to represent a given decimal number] and (2^n) [maximum decimal value for n bits].

 

Hi,

Also, when standard infix is actually executed it makes it simpler to first convert to RPN. Once converted, it is a straightforward execution sequence even for very complicated formulas with lots of variables.

Yeah we almost forgot about Tablets like Android. Download a calculator program for it
I downloaded one for mine a long time ago (dont use it much though) that had a bunch of physical unit conversions built in too and some phys constants.

 

II the 70's, I was given an National Semiconductor LED calculator and fell in love with it. HP's were too expensive for my budget, but the keys were exceptional. Both the feel and the legends were molded through. I did see, I think an HP65. The HP25/35, I think were really cool.

The calculator was left in a classroom and did not com with a charger. I added a "pill bottle" diode and pigtail to make an TI SR10 calculator charger work.
Excel or LibriOffice calc is my favorite now. I also added a battery connector.

The great thing about RPN calculators is no one steals them.

I even wrote a few RPN interpreters, one with unit conversions on an HP-85/HP-86 computer. I implemented add, subtract, multiply, divide, raise to power, PI and unit conversions to cm from um, Angstroms. I used it as a generic interface to enter cross sectional area for resistivity measurements of mostly thin-films. The input could be, for instance:

A/L = 2.1 cm 3000 A * 100 um / or you could do A/L = .5 mm .5 mm * 1 cm / and similarly circular cross-sections.

 

The great thing about RPN calculators is no one steals them.

As someone that has had both an HP-41CV and an HP-41CX stolen, I have a hard time buying this claim -- especially since these are the ONLY two calculators I have EVER had stolen.

 

I use my smartphone for so many things.

I like the idea of a dedicated device for some things, and I guess a calculator is one of them.

.

Same here - I'm not great at maths, so I have a collection of calculators. Some simple ones for maths I should be able to do in my head, and some I have to break out the instruction manual when the maths get serious.

Most of my calculators are Casio, but I have a couple of TI ones laying around.

 

II the 70's, I was given an National Semiconductor LED calculator and fell in love with it. HP's were too expensive for my budget, but the keys were exceptional. Both the feel and the legends were molded through. I did see, I think an HP65. The HP25/35, I think were really cool.

The calculator was left in a classroom and did not com with a charger. I added a "pill bottle" diode and pigtail to make an TI SR10 calculator charger work.
Excel or LibriOffice calc is my favorite now. I also added a battery connector.

The great thing about RPN calculators is no one steals them.

I even wrote a few RPN interpreters, one with unit conversions on an HP-85/HP-86 computer. I implemented add, subtract, multiply, divide, raise to power, PI and unit conversions to cm from um, Angstroms. I used it as a generic interface to enter cross sectional area for resistivity measurements of mostly thin-films. The input could be, for instance:

A/L = 2.1 cm 3000 A * 100 um / or you could do A/L = .5 mm .5 mm * 1 cm / and similarly circular cross-sections.

Hi,

"The great thing about RPN calculators is no one steals them."

So does this statement contribute to the desirable qualities or the undesirable?
On the one hand, nobody steals them, but on the other hand, that's because nobody wants them

I did find RPN very useful in the past though when writing programs for advanced scientific calculators. It is much nicer for the machine once the standard algebraic notation is converted to RPN. The stack makes everything simpler. Anyone ever see the "train" algorithm? That's where they use a freight train on a track to illustrate the conversion from infix to RPN, and makes it very simple to think about.

Also, i wonder now if the phrase behind "RPN" will becomes politically incorrect once someone starts to complain about it's usage.

 

Same thing happened with a DVM at work. You put too many buttons on it, no one borrows it. They may ask to borrow your calculator and you go sure, but it only accepts RPN. What's that? and they hand it back.

 

Also, i wonder now if the phrase behind "RPN" will becomes politically incorrect once someone starts to complain about it's usage.

Oh, it already is.

A couple of times I've had people tell me how insensitive it is when I've told them what it stood for.

Just goes to show you. If a country is recognized, by having an entire class of notation named in its honor, for a major contribution to mathematics and science made by one of its citizens, it's deemed insensitive in this upside-down PC-crazed world.

 

Oh, it already is.

A couple of times I've had people tell me how insensitive it is when I've told them what it stood for.

Just goes to show you. If a country is recognized, by having an entire class of notation named in its honor, for a major contribution to mathematics and science made by one of its citizens, it's deemed insensitive in this upside-down PC-crazed world.

Hi,

Yeah, that is interesting how everything is automatically ASSUMED to have a negative connotation when several real world examples clearly illustrate otherwise.

I wont mention one instance that recently occurred and widespread in the news for fear that a positive argument will be taken negatively
Granted some negative interpretation is surely warranted for some issues, but that is not always the ONLY interpretation. That's what bothers me the most. Some of the people that complain about stereotyping are themselves doing the same thing by assuming that everyone everywhere assumes that their interpretation is the only politically correct one.