WIRED; It's Past Time for You To Ditch That Fancy Scientific Calculator

[Zac Bruce]

Clearly writing concise article titles is not a strong point here, but this is a short, fairly interesting article about the use of calculators in industry, and also for students. The HP 11C gets a specific mention, so I guess that makes it HP related?

http://www.wired.com/story/ditch-that-fa...D=50730132

Personally I mostly agree with his point about the use of calculators for students. I find it rather archaic, in a lot of situations. I'm rather amused that in my accounting classes for our assessments we have to manually calculate and input data in to tables, which are simply re-creations of excel spreadsheets. What a shame that we couldn't just use the spreadsheets themselves, which would actually test us on being able to use the tools of the trade, so to speak.
I'm quite dismayed at what the examinations are testing; regurgitation of memorized information more so than application and interpretation, limiting the available resources that you would have access to in the "real world". Perhaps as I get further through my degree the emphasis will change more towards those ideals.

No doubt improvements will be made, slowly, to integrate the use of technology in examinations. No doubt at the moment the major calculator manufacturers rely heavily on the education sector for sales.

I do still have a lot of love for my calculators and I own many more than I could possibly use. I also have a habit of carrying a 12C around most days, and have used it in various situations. I'm a big believer in salary sacrificing into superannuation and have on more than one occasion used my calculator to explain the benefits, and to calculate precise values for the amount of tax they will save, the loss of fortnightly income and the net benefit to their superannuation, and make generalised predictions about what the FV of that money will be. Also to illustrate that the earlier they start putting that money in their super, the greater effect it will have; as the most common argument against it I hear is, "I don't have the money to spare now, I'll do that after I buy a house/renovate/buy a new car etc."
I'm sure that there are a multitude of websites or applications that could illustrate my point and make the calculations just as easily. But still, I like my calculators.

Although the article is short and not particularly well written or argued, I thought some of you might find some interest in it or that it might spark some interesting discussion


Regards,

Zac