Which calculators do u use?

<p>with quite bit of research... it seems that there is no need for graphing calculators... i am making another thread to ask you guys ....about the need ok ?</p>

<p>HP-67.</p>

<p>You can use it in the dark.</p>

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HP-67. You can use it in the dark.

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<p>Why is that even a draw? Does it produce enough light that you can write whatever you calculate down on paper? Or are you really sitting in bed in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, calculating factorials for the heck of it?</p>

<p>Silly!!</p>

<p>For EIT/PE: whatever calculator they allow. I use a casio.</p>

<p>For everything else: excel, TI86, sometimes abacus and trig table... :p</p>

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HP-67. You can use it in the dark.

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Why is that even a draw?

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It's a joke. The HP-67 was an engineer's dream machine in its day, but that was in the late 1970s, when nobody could hope to own a personal computer. </p>

<p>Like other calculators of that era, it had a glowing red LED display, instead of black LCDs. You really could use it in the dark.</p>

<p>I expect you actually could still get through college with an HP-67 today, but given its value as a collectible, it wouldn't make sense to let college students touch it.</p>

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For everything else: excel, TI86, sometimes abacus and trig table...

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Why bother with trig tables when you can use a slide rule?</p>

<p>Actually, many engineers still rely on lookup tables in one situation: solving engineering economics problems on the EIT exams. NCEES-approved calculators typically lack financial functions (although some can be programmed to include them), so EIT candidates still learn to solve such problems the 19th-Century way. Several pages of financial function lookup tables are printed in the EIT Reference Handbook.</p>

<p>I have my HP-67 right in front of me on my desk and I frequently work in a dark room with some light from the monitors but using an LCD calculator would be difficult. We have LCD HP (48 GX or SX) but the kids use that along with their TI models.</p>

<p>The HP-67 has about 224 steps of memory, a motorized magnetic card reader/writer and it came with a library of programs on magstrips. You could buy all kinds of libraries for engineering, statistical and other calculations. The keys today work better than the keys in modern junk. I started realizing how old the calculator was when I started seeing them in museums in the 1990s.</p>

<p>I also had a few Pickett slide rules in the 1970s and one circular slide rule in a rectangular plastic setting. The plastic setting had all sorts of formulas and conversion constants. It was meant to fit in your shirt pocket next to your pocket protector.</p>

<p>There's a company in Canada that still sells new Pickett slide rules. They buy them from around the world, including Eastern Europe and resell them or auction them off for a nice profit. They are frequently given as gifts to engineering grads. You can have fun with stuff like this in interviews too. Just hand the person that you're interviewing the slide rule and ask him what it is and how you use it.</p>

<p>Sometimes brute force methods do work. Especially if the table fits nicely in the L1 cache.</p>

<p>My high school actually required a graphing calculator. Does yours? If so, just use whatever calculator you already have!</p>

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My high school actually required a graphing calculator. Does yours? If so, just use whatever calculator you already have!

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<p>Calculus in high school required a TI-89...Only so we could graph functions.</p>

<p>yeah seriously a graphing calc has been required since Calc AB, to find certain intersections,etc. I've had my Ti-84+ since 9th grade (Teacher said we needed one lol)</p>

<p>
[quote]
There's a company in Canada that still sells new Pickett slide rules. They buy them from around the world, including Eastern Europe and resell them or auction them off for a nice profit. They are frequently given as gifts to engineering grads. You can have fun with stuff like this in interviews too. Just hand the person that you're interviewing the slide rule and ask him what it is and how you use it.

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If you like circular slide rules, the Concise company in Japan has been making them for more than 50 years, and still has them in production. They've branched out into other types of products, but they've never discontinued the slide rules. You can order them [url=<a href="http://www.concise.co.jp/eng0731/circle01.html%5Donline%5B/url"&gt;http://www.concise.co.jp/eng0731/circle01.html]online[/url&lt;/a&gt;] for very reasonable prices.</p>

<p>They should add scales for octal and hex conversions.</p>

<p>If you are serious about engineering I dont know why you would try to avoid using a graphing calculator. It is a very useful tool to learn how to do certain things on (visualizing, checking answers, quickly solve matrices....) and if you are on such a tight budget that $80 (used) to $120 (new) is that big of a deal to you then you should get a part time job. Which is very possible to do with an engineering schedule, especially the first 2 years.</p>

<p>Depending on your university they probably won't let you use graphing calculators on a test. Some let you use them in class, while some don't want to see them at all. I generally carry two calculators on me, a scientific TI-30XIIS, and a graphing TI-84 Plus Silver Edition. I also have a TI 89 Titanium which has just about every mechanical and electrical engineering formula known to man in it, so you simply plug in your variables into the equation, and it spits out the answer. The TI 89 has a mystical glow about it, lol. The whole purpose for doing math is learning how to solve your problems manualing, the calculator is only there to make you quicker and more efficient. It is a useful tool, but it must not be depended on.</p>

<p>If you become an engineer, generally 10 percent of your job is actual engineering, the other 90 percent is working with people and planning. It is not like you'll find engineers working with a chalk board out in the field. We have computers and calculators that can do everything for us. We can actually do engineering instead of worry about solving equations.</p>

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If you become an engineer, generally 10 percent of your job is actual engineering, the other 90 percent is working with people and planning. It is not like you'll find engineers working with a chalk board out in the field. We have computers and calculators that can do everything for us. We can actually do engineering instead of worry about solving equations.

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<p>For some jobs, that's just entirely incorrect.</p>

<p>I sit and do calcs all day, every day. I rarely go out into the field. I don't use a chalkboard, I use a whiteboard, and pads and pads of engineering paper. It takes all types of engineers to make a world, and while it may be true that you don't do a lot of calculations, that doesn't mean that there aren't other kinds of engineering work.</p>

<p>
[quote]
If you become an engineer, generally 10 percent of your job is actual engineering, the other 90 percent is working with people and planning. It is not like you'll find engineers working with a chalk board out in the field. We have computers and calculators that can do everything for us. We can actually do engineering instead of worry about solving equations.

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<p>I'm gonna say that might be true in your job but it's not true in general. </p>

<p>Working with people and planning is a part of the engineering process anyway...</p>

<p>Even thogh I have a HP-50G and use it alot, I must say I use my Casio FX-115ES a but more as its able to do approximate integrals pretty good for its size and price. Only time I use the 50G is for very big equations which I want to computer all at once or when I have to compute indefinite integrals. Sure I could use maple, but why when. My calculator is not as powerful, but a lot smaller in size.</p>

<p>TI-89 hands down. And by far the best birthday present I've ever received from my parents.</p>

<p>Simply put when it comes to phasor math or complex numbers the TI-89 is just simply priceless especially if your an Electrical Engineering major taking power systems engineering courses.</p>

<p>I use a TI-30XIIS, it doesn't graph or do anything real fancy. It's constantly at my side or on my desk. If I need to do something fancy or more complicated I use excel or other statistical and/or modeling programs.</p>