Let me tell you why I hate TI's shitty calculators. Mainly because they are marketed so aggressively to educators. Back in 1990, I was given a TI scientific c

Let me tell you why I hate TI's shitty calculators. Mainly because they are marketed so aggressively to educators. Back in 1990, I was given a TI scientific calculator, and some exercises to practice. I was to enter the UIL contest titled "Calculator Math" or something like that. It was a speed contest. My school (small rural public school), having the smartest and best-prepared students won at the first level of competition beating everyone. We punched our buttons furiously, we were punching buttons as fast as is possible without having registration errors. We figured nobody could beat us, since we made few errors. At the next level we competed, something went wrong. The test went as usual, we finished most of the exam in the allotted time, but did not score well enough to advance. The thing is, after about two-thirds of the allotted time had passed, students from other schools started getting up and leaving. During the exam, I smugly assumed they were giving up because I _knew_ that nobody was a significantly faster button-pusher than me, not by that large an amount. I was puzzled. Later I learned what an RPN calculator was, and began to understand what happened. I am a college instructor today, and I have yet to meet a student who knows what an RPN calculator is. Nearly every teacher's supply catalog that gets crammed into my mail sells TI exclusively.