Attention math geeks!

Alright math geeks, engineers and other college students I have a question for you all.

I'm a Bio major which means I get the fun of taking required Calc, chem, organic chem and physics classes for school. I regularly needed my calculator last year for chem calculating molecular mass, bond strengths etc. The calc I had was a TI 84 Plus Silver, which was stolen just before finals last year.

Well the new year is starting and I find myself needing to find a new calculator for classes. Should I pick up the 84 Silver again or would it be worth going up to the 89 Titanium or something else? I love having the periodic table info available right in the calc and the way I can lay thing out using the larger graphing calcs.

Future classes I know I will need it for are calc, physics, organic chem and stats.

I have a TI89, and I do think some of the features are worth it. Being able to find differentiate and integrate, and solve equations for varilables or whatever is nice, espeically on a test when its one more way to check your work.

Do you also have a laptop? There are ton of quality software calculators out there that have the benefit of a nice big screen for graphing. Prices start at free.

I'd get the TI-84. It's pretty much the standard, and allowed on all of the tests. anything above an 84 isn't allowed on tests. If you want something more advanced, get the Ti Inspire CAS. It can do almost anything (solve, factor, etc.) and the screen has a higher resolution than my laptop. My friend has one, though, and hates it. He doesn't know how to do anything by hand, and failed the last chem. test because of it. I know a kid with a TI-89, too, and he is the same way. 100 on all homework, 70-80 on all tests.

note: I don't know if any of this applies in college. I'm in the IB program in high school.

I did everything with an oldschool 84+

YMMV

FWIW, if you don't want to pay new prices for one, check the local pawn shops. My stepson needed a graphing calc for one of his HS math classes, & we found a used one for less than 1/2 of new price at a pawn shop in a local college town.

I went TI89 Titanium all the way. That thing has enough features to rebuild modern civilization as we know it if required.

Still use it as an ME now for unit conversions and other piddly stuff. You can do it with a lot less, but if you want the easy path go Titanium. If you wanna be a tough guy then get an HP 33s and do everything in RPN.

Well, I firmly believe in HP calculators. I have a 22S here on my desk. It got me through (and an A in):

Calculus for Dummies (AKA "Business Calculus")

Finite math

2 accounting from hell courses

2 physics courses

FINK ("FINC") from hell

Chemistry from hell

and a lot more I'm not thinking of right now. When I was a kid, all the rich kids had HP's. When I went to college, I bought a HP. My wife bought a Casio because it had more bells and whistles. She returned it and bought a 22S like mine. I taught her how to program it. The semester after she finished chem 102, they stopped putting quadratics on the tests. They said a non-"banned" calculator had cracked quadratics. That was my programming on the 22S. My FINK professor said you had to have a business calculator to pass his course. The 22S put his course down with another A.

You can use calculators on tests now?

mblommel wrote: If you wanna be a tough guy then get an HP 33s and do everything in RPN.

I used a HP33S for two semesters last year, and it's messed me up. I find it hard to use a regular calculator now, without instinctively thinking in RPN.

Luke wrote:

mblommel wrote: If you wanna be a tough guy then get an HP 33s and do everything in RPN.

I used a HP33S for two semesters last year, and it's messed me up. I find it hard to use a regular calculator now, without instinctively thinking in RPN.

+1 Back in college in the '90's, I used an HP 48. Years later I picked up a Ti 30 something and couldn't understand why I didn't get the right answers. Then I figured out how to enter a function using a modified RPN now I have no problems.

I'm a math major. I'm in calculus three (three dimensional calculus, etc..). Honestly, I'd say get both. Buy an 83 or 84 used (same exact thing), and get an 89. 84 is easier to use by far, but the 89 has some nice features.

FWIW, so far there is nothing that I couldn't do with just the 83/84, except some complex financial equations that the 89 wouldn't do anyways.

porksboy wrote: You can use calculators on tests now?

Yes, but the tests have gotten harder with it. All the teachers I've asked have said that, for example, the Calculus AP test got about 2X harder than it was previous to calculators.

You can get RPN or "regular" HP calculators. I chose the "regular" one.

My friend used a slide rule on his tests at TAMU. He got marked wrong on one test question. It was marked "Slide rule error." He worked the entire problem out by hand and brought it to the professor to show that his answer was correct and it was the professor that actually had the slide rule error. He professor replied "Well, I can find more things wrong on your exam if I look for them, get out."

Oh no I don't think I want to go with RPN again, my dad had a calc that was like that and I hated it.

I do have my netbook that I take to classes to take notes but my profs don't allow that to be used as a calc for tests. It would be far to easy to pull up my notes or look up answers online for other parts of the tests so that is out.

Looks like the 84 is more than likely the way I will go again.

I bought a calculator that used the largest batteries I could find. I think it took (2) 9v bricks. That way, I could smuggle answers to the test in the battery compartment or a small snack. Math was not my strong point, why fight it? OTHER people, not me, used to call it a weed compartment. Not sure what that meant.

I got My BSME with a Ti30xa solar.. It was hard, and I had to study, but I never let the calculator do the work for me..

TI-89 all day long. The "pretty print" is very nice for entering big equations or computations. Plus the TI-89 was one fuction away from being the old big dog, the TI-92, which looks like the predecessor of the voyage.

edit: I'm a mechanical engineer.

Alternately, if you have an iphone, it comes with a fairly powerful calculator already, and there are very good free graphing apps.

That said, my wife the math whiz has two HP calcs, an 83 and some other behemoth, and she loves them both.

FYI, I have a Ti-92 that has been sitting in a desk for a ling time that I would let go very cheap, if you are interested.

I went cheap and got freeish ones from my friends when they upgraded. The last two years of college, my graphic calculator would not display one complete column and one complete row. I did a lot of 10, .001, etc. to see the ENTIRE answer, only bit me in the ass a couple of times and saved me a bunch of money for other more important things like gas and poly bushings.

Bryce

Tim Baxter wrote: Alternately, if you have an iphone, it comes with a fairly powerful calculator already, and there are very good free graphing apps. That said, my wife the math whiz has two HP calcs, an 83 and some other behemoth, and she loves them both.

Someone tried the iPhone last year but hey got banned after they got caught using the net connection to look things up.

I have a Storm anyway.

Real math geeks don't use calculators. Numbers are for applied math

After spending time in the airy symbolic world of pure math, I took a physics course in third year university. Never occurred to me to bring a calculator to the first test - that was some frantic longhand calculation that day. I brought a slide rule to the final exam. In 1994 or so.

I had one of those frantic longhand calculation days, except it was due to malfunctioning equipment. Somewhere between my house and the testing room on the morning of my first SAT test, I broke the screen on my simple (non-graphing) calculator. Of course, when I discovered this I thought the world was going to end, but since I had no choice once the test had started, I soldiered on doing all the math by hand...nothing too difficult, but long division/multiplication was annoying with such limited test time. I think it must have channeled some chi or something, because I still got a better math score on my SATs that time than I did on my second attempt (when I brought two calculators for good measure).

Bryce

Anyone here use the HP 50g? Seems like it might be a good contender and is the same price as the 84+ but seems to be more in league with the 89.