posted
Long, boring thread title, I know. I'm at work and my boss asked me to look up the user manuals for ... you guessed it, commonly used financial and scientific calculators. I work at a testing center and for one of the tests we (the proctors) need to ensure that the memory of the calculators is erased, or something like that. So I'm supposed to obtain the user manuals, print out the appropriate portions, and distribute them amongst the staff. Unfortunately, I have no idea what calculators to look up. I'm a history major, and the only scientific calculator I ever used was a TI-83 Plus for Statistics, and that was almost 3 years ago, so I'm a bit out of the loop when it comes to calculators.
So, if any of you could suggest calculators that might be used in an upperlever finance course, (TI BAII Plus was mentioned. It's all Greek to me), I would appreciate it greatly. Thanks!
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I'd get all of these. I've seen lots of HP calculators around in both finance and scientific fields.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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You two are amazing. I got the info for all of those. That first one on the site you gave Dag, it can print via infrared. That's ridiculous. A proctors worst nightmare.
If anyone else has any suggestions, I'd appreciate them, though this experience is making me more glad than ever that I'm a history major. Calculators are evil.
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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The HPs are extremely easy to cheat with. I wouldn't ven let them in the door if I were you. I still have my HP48s from college and still use it daily since I love the rpn format.
Back in college I used to type tons of notes in my calculator. There was programs available to do it with a much smaller font size than normal allowing you to store even more notes in memory. These programs were rampant among us HP users. We'd beam programs back and forth a lot.
Sadly after battery failures I've lost all the wonderfully glorius programs of the past. and since I am the only one I know with a HP48 I have no way of getting them back without typing them in by hand or buying a serial adapter for the calculator. I'm not about to do that.
The calculator is starting to finally act its age, and now takes about 4 presses on the power button before it comes to life. I've recently began thinking of replacing it. The modern ones even have USB connectors but the $150 is a bit much for a caculator that does so much when I only like it for normal activities in rpn.
Still I love rpn, so maybe I can find a used replacement out there when this one finally kicks the bracket.
Posts: 197 | Registered: Jan 2007
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Font size has nothing to do with how much space textual data takes up. I would guess that the programs were employing simple compression techniques on the text you entered.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I knew several engineering guys who used their TI-89 (still the premier calculator for engineering -- the freaking thing will do all sorts of calcs for you) to store data. There were (4 years ago) tons of programs you could download that would do conversions, store data, and other nifty stuff. No infrared comms, though.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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when i took tests where calculators were allowed, there was a specific list of allowed calculators. Probably easier for the proctors that way. I feel for you.
What I don't understand is why TI calculators are still about as expensive as they were 15 years ago. They should be dirt cheap by now...considering how far cost/mips has dropped in that time.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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