How and why do you use your HP calc?

[pier4r]

I bought my hp 50g at the end of 2010 and before I was happily using (and I still use) my sharp el 506w.

Reason: when I was studying in the university I did not want to use a bulky computer to crunch some numbers. Moreover moving the head up and down (look at the desk where there are the notes I am writing, look at the monitor, look at the desk, look at the monitor, etc...) was infuriating.

So with a calculator I could first develop the needed program and then work only on the same plane (where notes and calculator would lay), without stress for my neck.

Then I discovered how amazing is the environment of the 50g. Unless one has a computer with a ready made math environment (maple, matlab , mathematica and so on), using a normal programming language (basic, python - I don't like the forced indentation of python though -, pascal, bash, java, c#, what not) requires way more "setup". Find a math library, import it, adjust the parameters for the library, process the result and so on.

Instead the 50g has so many commands ready to be used that makes the development phase really quick (if one knows the commands), The execution may be not quick, but it depends on the size of the problem.

For the same reason of "studying looking on the same plane instead of moving the head too much" I bought in 2010 a ZTE 180 tablet. ( you can see it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30mLTPfAIW4 )

It is still working (I lost the power adapter though) and it is really great to show PDF - the main reason I bought it - or videos. Videos have to be loaded via usb.

So, once I got hooked with the ease of developing a program about a math problem with the 50g, it became my comfort zone. Every time I think about a problem (recently one about statistic . How large should be a sample size to reproduce properly the real distribution of choices in a population) my first approach is to use the 50g because it is real quick. This is even more valid with library additions (see ListExt from David, goferlist and so on).

I used scilab in the past as free alternative to matlab and mathematica, but I still find the 50g quicker (remember: comfort zone). Sure for something like trees, graphs and so on, "casting them" in list format on the 50g is quite a work (a programming language with structures or objects would easily be better). So when I try to use a "tree" with the 50g, it is more to refresh my algorithmic skills than something else. Instead for math related operations, the 50g is awesome.

For example I'd like to apply the same function on a set of inputs. With a programming languages I should write a for loop that calls a function for every element of an array, with the 50g:

{ i1 i2 i3 i4 } FUNCTION

and that's it. With the evolution of newRPL the 50g may become more useful and way faster. Amazing.

That is also the reason why so far I did not try any other math environment (the need arise only when the memory on the 50g is not enough) and I really should try to use the hp prime to process some large input and burn a bit the unused CPU (well, not true, the CPU runs BOINC ) on the android devices that I have.