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Yes exactly. I'm about to complete a PhD in physics. I've never once needed a graphing calculator from the beginning of my bachelor's until now. It's a complete

• improbable22 7y ago
  But Mathematica, on the other hand...
• ska 7y ago
  They were a lot more useful when computer access was limited. You could do a lot of practical things on, say an HP-48 that these days you would just use a laptop for.
  • wtallis 7y ago
    For physics specifically, I'd still take the HP-48 over a laptop, because there's no good PC software that provides a nice user interface for doing calculations with units. Undergrad physics (and to a lesser extent, chemistry) homework sets are much easier when your calculator is not only doing automatic unit conversions for you, but also type-checking those units throughout the whole process. The laptop only really becomes preferable when you're doing things like statistics or numerical integration where the sheer quantity of arithmetic becomes inconvenient for a handheld device.