I had the privilege of buying two expensive calculators. First, a TI-85 (1993) and then a new math teacher hired was more familiar with the HP-48G (1995) and h

I had the privilege of buying two expensive calculators. First, a TI-85 (1993) and then a new math teacher hired was more familiar with the HP-48G (1995) and had us get one. While fun to use to goof off in class, I felt they were like learning to use a slide rule: obsolete before you bought them. Did the small screen and the over-precise numeric answers give us a better idea of what we were doing than pencil and graph paper? Did it make any students appreciate math subjects more? Having built an RPN evaluator at summer camp, I appreciated that my friends were learning it, too, on the HP-48. In college, I literally never used it. A simple scientific calculator was almost always more useful.