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Re:TI-83 Plus One More by projektfu on Sunday July 31, 2022 @10:47AM (#32295866)
I had the privilege of buying two expensive calculators. First, a TI-85 (1993) and then a new math teacher hired was more familiar with the HP-48G (1995) and had us get one. While fun to use to goof off in class, I felt they were like learning to use a slide rule: obsolete before you bought them. Did the small screen and the over-precise numeric answers give us a better idea of what we were doing than pencil and graph paper? Did it make any students appreciate math subjects more?

Having built an RPN evaluator at summer camp, I appreciated that my friends were learning it, too, on the HP-48.

In college, I literally never used it. A simple scientific calculator was almost always more useful.

Re:TI-83 Plus One More by petee on Sunday July 31, 2022 @02:19PM (#32297450)
I'd argue that a sliderule is at least something you can manipulate with your hands and immediately see the output relationship.

Tangent, I use a tape measure at work and you can fold it back on itself to make a basic slide rule for quick addition and subtraction without bothering with fractions :)