Most common calculators in the forum?

[pier4r]

(11-30-2017 04:17 PM)grsbanks Wrote:  The only reason courses dictate a particular type of calculator is so they can show you exactly which buttons to press on it to get a given result. What are students learning with that? Nothing! They should be learning how to use and program their calculators to solve problems and it shouldn't matter which one they use as long as they are able to devise and implement a sound algorithm.

Those are not only teachers though. I remember when I contributed with a method to solve a particularly lengthy problem in one exam in the University (nothing fancy, just "look we have calculators"). I published some personal notes on the subject (i) using as example the sharp el 506w.

On the day of the exam, 20 people, I am not kidding, show up with a brand new sharp el 506w and... asked me how to do the procedure since they just looked briefly in the manual.
I explained them but I was quite surprised.

It is us "human". We may be more interested to develop our way with a calculator, but we are not interested in cleaning a bike chain, there is someone else that will do this. And so people put efforts where they are interested.

(i) see http://pier4r.wikispaces.com/file/view/A...r1.1.9.pdf page 178, but it is Italian)