Slashdot Mirror
HP Releases New RPN Scientific Calculator
majid writes "HP just announced a new calculator, the HP 33S. It supports RPN and algebraic notation, and sports a funky V-shaped design. I don't think it looks as nice as the 33SII it is supposed to replace, and it seems to have rubber keys instead of the wonderful hard plastic keys on older HP calculators, but it's nice to have a new RPN scientific calculator that does not have the intimidating learning (and remembering) curve of the 48 or 49 series. This one just might join my trusty 15C ...
The User's manual PDF is available courtesy of Amazon, where it is apparently already No. 85 on the best-selling list."
Nokia finally bought out HP. I guess if you cannot make the phone with the normal keys, you can make other consumer devices so screwed up that people think that it is OK to go on diagonal to type anything.
Sometimes I think form should still follow function. But I guess my brain was not destroyed by the rapid MTV editing.
Fifty bucks buys you a calculator with rubbery keys (in a weird 'newbie-friendly' pattern), a two-line (!!!) screen, and 31KB (!!!) of "RAM user memory"? What the fuck are they smoking? How is this better than a used HP48G that you could get for probably the same price?
Jesus Christ, it's 2004. We should have HP48G-looking units with 64MB of RAM, double-high-res colour transflective screens (think GBA), USB ports, AND full backwards-compatibility with all the wonderful HP48[G/GX/S/SX] software out there (think of how the newer Palm devices can run older Palm software), but no, we get this pile of steamed monkey dung...
I guess this is what we can expect from..... Compaq.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I'm in grad school in EE about 6 or 7 years behind my fellow students (cashed in on the dotcom boom, etc.) and we were talking about this yesterday.
When I was in engineering school, the HP48GX was the calc. Everyone knew RPN, all the circuits students learned quickly how to solve linear algebra rather quickly on the HP. Now I'm the only one with an HP. Everyone, everyone has a TI-89. Symbolics plus nearly everything the HP could do (except RPN), much improved graphing, much improved processor. The new HP calc? Overwhelmingly, reviews have pronounced it crap, both in interface and underlying engineering. (It still uses the same old "Saturn" chip the HP48 series did ten years ago, with a slight speed bump.) Two or three students had never even SEEN an HP calculator.
Is this true everywhere? Has the HP calculator series been relegated to the trash heap? If so, how did HP allow itself to bungle this so badly?
OpenGLFan, whose love of RPN is the only thing attaching himself to his current calculator...
Why couldnt they have made it like the 48sx?
Because in recent years HP decided to save a bundle of money by decreasing the product quality which is what the HP name was known for. They made up for it with that shiny metallic paint. Some focus group must have preferred it to the staid ABS plastic that was typical of HP stuff. Good thing, too, since it makes it easy to recognize pre-Carly from post-Carly HP products.
I have an HP-28S that I got in 1988 and used through college, and a HP49g+ that I was stupid enough to get in 2000. I know exactly what you're talking about. Once an HP model gets that metallic sheen on it, it's game over.
Math is a hierarchical kind of knowledge. If you don't understand the foundations you won't understand the higher level stuff. It's all well and good to use a high-powered calculator to do stuff that you already know well, since, as you say, it lets you focus on the harder parts. But when you are learning the things for the first time you shouldn't be relying on the calculator.
I love RPN. Many of the posters here love RPN. But to the average user, RPN is like "lol i dont get it its all BACKWREDZ". I remember offering to loan my HP48G to people who handed it right back to me after trying (and failing) to comprehend RPN.
Is there a paper somewhere on why RPN is a Good Thing(TM), and not just "lol teh math is backwardz"? Cuz to the average user, RPN is like "speak like Yoda do I!" It seems pointless to them, and only slows comprehension.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I agree that calculators are still useful for educational settings, although for a different reason that the one you suggest.
As a computational astrophysicist, I no longer find any use for hand-held calculators whatsoever. If I find the need to do a detailed numerical computation while working, I simply pop up Mathematica. I have hundreds of physical constants relevant for my work stored in a handy ".m" file, so if I wish to compute, say, the Planck mass, I can simply type in "Sqrt [hbar c / G]", rather than punching in numerical values. It is far more convenient and _more powerful_ than using a hand calculator since I can readily construct expressions, do symbolic manipulations on them, and produce complex plots with very little effort. Mathematica has an enormous understanding of mathematical functions, so if I want, say, the value of second derivative of the Laguerre polynomial of order n, I can simply enter "N [D [LaguerreL [n, x], x] ]". (Try to stuff than in your calculator and smoke it.) It also has unlimited numerical precision, so if I want the value of Pi to 100 digits, I just enter "N [Pi, 100]". (Not a practical example, given that 100 decades is greater than the total number of fundamental particles in the current Hubble radius, but an illustrative one nonetheless.) In addition, I have the ability to immediately translate those expressions into Tex format or C or Fortran code, so that they can be readily incorporated into papers or other standalone code. And that is saying nothing of the fact that a full-sized keyboard is vastly easier to use than _either_ a stylus or a weeny calculator keypad.
If I am in a meeting of some kind or just informally speaking to someone, and the need for a quick numerical estimate comes up, I can always whip out an estimate good to within 10% without using any calculating aid other than a pencil and paper. You'll find that all good scientists and engineers can do quick back-of-the-envelope calculations when the need arises.
So what use are calculators in schools when students could be using Mathematica (or any other mathematical software of their choice) on their laptops? The plain fact of the matter is that math and science instructors almost universally do not wish to construct a course in which the learning goes beyond the simplest applications of the principles learned. Therefore, they must almost always artificially control additional information and calculating aids during exams (normally no notes, books, or computers). Calculators are the one concession they do allow, only because their functionality is limited, and therefore the aid they provide is also limited. I admit calculators have become reasonably sophisticated as of late, and so as a result, partially to offset any potential unfair advantage, instructors are increasingly allowing students to stuff all of the equations they can fit onto a "cheat sheet" of a certain size.
When you think about the situation, it is fairly ludicrous. No literature professor would make a student write a term paper on Shakespeare without having access to the original plays and all the additional supplemental information he can lay his hands on. But it is easier to construct a system in which students are tested on rote memory and simple application of known template examples from class, rather than being able to use all the resources at their disposal to synthesize everything they have learned in creative applications. Synthesis and creative use of one's knowledge, is, after all, what real world science and engineering are all about. Primarily because of this artificial construction, classwork performance is quite often a poor indicator of a student's potential as a real scientist or engineer.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.