Articles or book(s) about the functions behind a scientific calculator

[edryer]

Slightly off topic but relevant.

If you are interested in a foundation maths course that encourages Calculator usage may I suggest the following book published nearly forty years ago by Prentice-Hall that I came across by complete accident.

Algebra and trigonometry with calculators.
Marshall D Hestenes.
556 pages.
1981.

Not only has this book been lost in the mist of time, it is quite a fantastic basic course that takes you from sub high school level rapidly through all of pre-calculus and some Matrix work, a lot of Algebra, Trig and Geometry and a huge number of examples and exercises. By the end you'd be pretty adept at most of the core areas. It is beautifully written and very clear, it is also VERY thorough, touching areas that would never often be seen (good practice!).

The book itself makes little recommendation of Calculator to use but suggests the likes of the TI-25/30/50 and SR40, Casio FX-21 and FX-31, Sharp 5806 and finally... the HP-31E, these being the (Late 70's) Basic Scientific Calculators of that time.

It is an unusual book in that it encourages you actually use a Calculator throughout whilst simultaneously attempting to second-guess a rough answer mentally. A chapter on Calculator accuracy and many exercises just to familiarise yourself with a Scientific calculator with random equations to solve, it also highlights some solutions in RPN.

Quite an odd book then but I think gold dust for those wanting to explore mathematics but have little expertise to start too deeply.

A few copies floating around used on the usual sites cheaply. You can also "loan" an electronic copy through the archive.org library if you wish to have a look first.

I tried to locate the author to thank him... but he has also seemingly long gone.