(05-06-2019 03:44 PM)Androsynth Wrote: Hi all, I'm new here.
Long story short, I've decided to teach myself math. Had a pretty terrible math education (all of my worst teachers in high school and college were math teachers) and I find it annoying that I just don't 'get it'. So I decided to jump back in and learn it as a hobby. Well I needed a calculator right? So I got a TI 92+, which turned into a couple of Casios, a Prizm, and then an HP 50g and a Prime over the course of a couple of years. Hey, a hobby has to have gadgets, right? That's mostly thanks to random post results through google from here too.
While I enjoy all of them, one thing stuck out: the 50g. Having absolutely no experience with RPN/RPL, I was forced to learn it to use the damn thing... and I quickly found that RPN is the most helpful of the bunch when learning math, or at least, it is for me. Once I got it, I found it to be more of an ... extension of my brain I guess? Not only is it faster, it breaks down problems into component bits, forces me to 'walk' through them rather than just key them in, press a button, and see the answer. In the process, this often teaches me *where* I'm going wrong learning something. Super useful.
In the end, I ended up reading a bunch of stuff here about RPN, which led me to the HP 42s, and then, the new DM42. Given how much I'm learning with these things, I figure $200 on a new cal with pc-transfer capabilities was worth the expense... and now I'm waiting like an impatient child for the damn thing to show up.
If you'd have told me five years ago I'd be excited about a calculator, I'd have laughed at you.
Funny how things work out. Who knew this stuff was so fun? Looking forward to seeing where this takes me.
Nice post! I can empathize very much with it, since I’m going over all my engineering classes that I took when completing my degrees in CS and EE almost 30 yrs ago. It is quite an experience to go through all the theory behind with the aid of the newer HP and Swissmicros calculators (I used a 15C, 42S, 28S and 48SX while in school). I think (old) age and these tools give you a better perspective. I still don’t know which I prefer, though: the 50G or the Prime — both are outstanding machines — and so is the DM42.
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