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Ask Slashdot: Cheap Second Calculators For Tests?

Posted by timothy on from the do-the-beads-slide-smoothly? dept.

Rich0 writes "I own an HP 48 calculator that I'm quite content with, but soon I'll need to take a certification exam where this calculator will not be welcome. I'm sure this is a common problem for those who own higher-end calculators. Sure, I could just buy a random $15 calculator with a few trig functions, but I was wondering who makes the best moderately-priced calculators for somebody who already has and appreciates a programmable calculator and just needs something simple. Bonus points if the calculator can handle polar vector arithmetic and unit conversions, but it has to be simple enough that virtually any exam would accept its use."

5 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. Calculator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I believe the TI-36X Pro would probably do what you are looking for. It is approved for use on Professional Engineer tests, from what I have read.

    1. Re:Calculator by skutterbob · · Score: 5, Informative

      I have a ti-36 solar... if you're taking the PE exam check the NECEES website,http://ncees.org/exams/calculator-policy/ that is the definitive site for what is allowed. Get the calculator a few weeks ahead of time if possible take a short practice exam with it... since you "know" your normal calc. (which btw is not allowed) Heck have a spare anyway... I had 2. shit happens Engineers Prepare for anything ;)

    2. Re:Calculator by CaptQuark · · Score: 5, Funny

      A good engineer believes in redundancy...

      ~~

    3. Re:Calculator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And a great engineer carries a slide rule, because batteries run out.

      True story: I did well at MIT 30 years ago, partly because working with my dad's old circular slide rule gave me a fine appreciation for rounding erors, margins of error and orders of magnitude unavailable to my calculator using peers. But I almost failed the thermodynamics final because *so many* of the teaching assistants came over to wonder "what in the heck is that!!?" The professor had to chase them off so I could finish my work.

      My calculator equipped peers also had a terrible, terrible habit of precalculating what their measurements should be in order to get the desired result. I almost came to blows with several of them over this, and the professor was *shocked* to find out that the excellent lab results people had been showing were mostly a matter of c students fudging their lab results to get the right measurements. It gave me a fine appreciation for insisting on seeing the original data.

  2. Re:Mod This Up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is a jerk just like you at my job. I'll ask coworkers for their opinion on a particular tool, and he has to but in and say, "You can just Google for the tool and find hundreds of them for sale." I don't ask my coworkers because I need a list of names, I ask them because I want their opinion, and usually specific to the type of work we do. Part of "growth" is just not knowing what is the most popular choice, but knowing the criteria people use when selecting a tool. And just like that jerk coworker, guys like you will complain how such requests for opinion and discussion waste your time by making you do other people's work for them, yet you have no problem spending way more time whining about wasting time than you would with actually moving on and doing whatever makes your time so important.

    You want people to speak up, and not sugar coat things for the purpose of "inoffensiveness"? Well, the did, by down modding such garbage. You want to value honest expression over phony appearance, yet bitch when it turns out people disagree with you.