6 ms·

Who owns a calculator outside of schools? Everything can be done better and faster in a cas on a laptop.

siproprio 8y ago
This is true. I'm still in college.
wtallis 8y ago
> Everything can be done better and faster in a cas on a laptop. Everything except actually typing in the problem. A good specialized keyboard and input method (RPN) will always beat QWERTY, especially one that doesn't even have a number pad.
- zeth___ 8y ago
  Unless you need to do real calculations, in which case qwerty beats the pants off RPN because you are just programming. Calculators are a relic from a bygone era, kept in use only by regulations and a captured market.
  - wtallis 8y ago
    What do you mean by "real calculations"?
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > Calculators are a relic from a bygone era, kept in use only by regulations and a captured market. Uh, no. I often find myself picking up a calculator rather than opening up Mathematica to do a lot of calculations.
    - zeth___ 8y ago
      Might I suggest Jupiter notebooks? They are like mathematica, but don't suck.
- 1wd 8y ago
  This calculator doesn't seem to support RPN though: https://github.com/numworks/epsilon/issues/35 https://github.com/numworks/epsilon/issues/35 Too bad. There's always https://www.swissmicros.com/ https://www.swissmicros.com/
analog31 8y ago
In my view, it's sad that kids don't use computational tools such as CAS or Jupyter in school. Ironically, they're the ones who are supposed to be "digital natives," but their math tools are in the stone age compared with what I get to use in the real world. Perhaps if kids were allowed to ease their way into computation, "coding" wouldn't be a great big fearful hurdle when they get older. The TI graphing calculators exist solely to support the testing regime, which serves no pedagogic purpose. Granted, I own a calculator -- $10 Casio solar -- but I grew up with one, and it's just easy to grab and use, especially in the workshop or lab. I also still have an analog watch. But there's no reason to impose my old habits on the young generation.
- lopmotr 8y ago
  A couple of reasons are cost and being distracted. If you give kids a computer, they'll definitely prefer to dig around in it doing absolutely anything besides school work, no matter how boring the other things on the computer are. And plenty of poor kids can't afford to just carry a laptop around every day, which means risking losing or smashing it. Schools can have them but they won't be instantly available - there'll be 10 minutes of class wasted getting out the laptop cart and signing them out and collecting them back in, and dealing with kids fighting each other over them. It's a massive pain. I've done that and it's not at all practical for daily use. Then how do they do their homework if the CAS computer's at school? I've heard of schools using Chromebooks and Ipads, which might address some of those problems, but not as well as a basic scientific calculator.
gh02t 8y ago
I'm an engineer and I use a calculator frequently. I'll use a full computer for more involved calculations, but it's hard to beat the convenience of a calculator that is ready to go immediately for quick computations. Often a CAS isn't even that useful anyway, they're still pretty shit for any sort of complicated symbolic calculations. As a simple example, even doing basic vector calculus in Mathematica is clunky and barely usable.
- qubex 8y ago
  As far as vector calculus goes, I find these functions cover (most) of what I (usually) need: http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/VectorAnalysis.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/VectorAnalysis.h... When it gets to Tensor Calculus though it’s literally back to the blackboard to cry tears of blood.
  - gh02t 8y ago
    Yeah I'm aware, they're just limited. My problem is that they are focused on component-wise manipulation. There's not a good way to do symbolic manipulation of generic vectors/matrices/tensors AFAIK. It's improved though and you can now do some useful things with it- the vector calculus related tools used to be in an external module and truly barely worked. Edit: the same applies to tensors. Mathematica is actually pretty elegant for working with concrete tensors IMO, but kinda sucks for symbolic manipulation. Not that it's an easy problem to solve. It's like that with pretty much every CAS and I think it will be a while time before we have a good grip on how to do such things with a computer.
lopmotr 8y ago
I've weaned myself off a physical calculator with Insect ( https://insect.sh/ https://insect.sh/ ) with the webpage stored on my computer but it's still slow to launch and slow to enter things. The main advantage over a physical one for me is copying and pasting to other programs which I do a lot of. The main downside is not enough precision, so I go for Windows calculator when I need more digits. I just wish it was actually high precision like it claims to be :(

This is true. I'm still in college.

> Everything can be done better and faster in a cas on a laptop. Everything except actually typing in the problem. A good specialized keyboard and input method (RPN) will always beat QWERTY, especially one that doesn't even have a number pad.

zeth___ 8y ago
Unless you need to do real calculations, in which case qwerty beats the pants off RPN because you are just programming. Calculators are a relic from a bygone era, kept in use only by regulations and a captured market.
- wtallis 8y ago
  What do you mean by "real calculations"?
- saagarjha 8y ago
  > Calculators are a relic from a bygone era, kept in use only by regulations and a captured market. Uh, no. I often find myself picking up a calculator rather than opening up Mathematica to do a lot of calculations.
  - zeth___ 8y ago
    Might I suggest Jupiter notebooks? They are like mathematica, but don't suck.
1wd 8y ago
This calculator doesn't seem to support RPN though: https://github.com/numworks/epsilon/issues/35 https://github.com/numworks/epsilon/issues/35 Too bad. There's always https://www.swissmicros.com/ https://www.swissmicros.com/

analog31 8y ago

In my view, it's sad that kids don't use computational tools such as CAS or Jupyter in school. Ironically, they're the ones who are supposed to be "digital natives," but their math tools are in the stone age compared with what I get to use in the real world. Perhaps if kids were allowed to ease their way into computation, "coding" wouldn't be a great big fearful hurdle when they get older. The TI graphing calculators exist solely to support the testing regime, which serves no pedagogic purpose. Granted, I own a calculator -- $10 Casio solar -- but I grew up with one, and it's just easy to grab and use, especially in the workshop or lab. I also still have an analog watch. But there's no reason to impose my old habits on the young generation.

lopmotr 8y ago
A couple of reasons are cost and being distracted. If you give kids a computer, they'll definitely prefer to dig around in it doing absolutely anything besides school work, no matter how boring the other things on the computer are. And plenty of poor kids can't afford to just carry a laptop around every day, which means risking losing or smashing it. Schools can have them but they won't be instantly available - there'll be 10 minutes of class wasted getting out the laptop cart and signing them out and collecting them back in, and dealing with kids fighting each other over them. It's a massive pain. I've done that and it's not at all practical for daily use. Then how do they do their homework if the CAS computer's at school? I've heard of schools using Chromebooks and Ipads, which might address some of those problems, but not as well as a basic scientific calculator.

gh02t 8y ago

I'm an engineer and I use a calculator frequently. I'll use a full computer for more involved calculations, but it's hard to beat the convenience of a calculator that is ready to go immediately for quick computations. Often a CAS isn't even that useful anyway, they're still pretty shit for any sort of complicated symbolic calculations. As a simple example, even doing basic vector calculus in Mathematica is clunky and barely usable.

qubex 8y ago
As far as vector calculus goes, I find these functions cover (most) of what I (usually) need: http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/VectorAnalysis.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/VectorAnalysis.h... When it gets to Tensor Calculus though it’s literally back to the blackboard to cry tears of blood.
- gh02t 8y ago
  Yeah I'm aware, they're just limited. My problem is that they are focused on component-wise manipulation. There's not a good way to do symbolic manipulation of generic vectors/matrices/tensors AFAIK. It's improved though and you can now do some useful things with it- the vector calculus related tools used to be in an external module and truly barely worked. Edit: the same applies to tensors. Mathematica is actually pretty elegant for working with concrete tensors IMO, but kinda sucks for symbolic manipulation. Not that it's an easy problem to solve. It's like that with pretty much every CAS and I think it will be a while time before we have a good grip on how to do such things with a computer.

lopmotr 8y ago

I've weaned myself off a physical calculator with Insect ( https://insect.sh/ https://insect.sh/ ) with the webpage stored on my computer but it's still slow to launch and slow to enter things. The main advantage over a physical one for me is copying and pasting to other programs which I do a lot of. The main downside is not enough precision, so I go for Windows calculator when I need more digits. I just wish it was actually high precision like it claims to be :(