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Calculator recomendations

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PegroProX440

Hot Rolled
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Mar 7, 2012
Location
Ormond Beach
Is anyone using a calculator that they recommend that can use decimal notation about 5 digits out. example .00001. All of mine change to scientific notation after .0001. I know its not a big deal to move the decimal place or just use the calculator on my phone but I want a solution that is easy to use that I can just leave at the machine. Thanks
 
Old school HP32. That's all I use period! :D

Yeah, I know, they are no longer made only used ones for sale out there. You can set the number of decimal places as you see fit. I recall some of the TI upper level calculators you can set the decimal places too. And also fix it so scientific notation cannot be displayed.
 
TI-83+ gives me all my answers in that sweet, sweet engineering notation:

xxx.x *10^(n*3)

If that doesn't make any sense, it shows numbers 1-999 normally, then 1000-999,999 as 1e3 - 999.999e3, same the other way, .001-.999 are 1e-3 and 999e-3

So much easier to quickly parse information since it will spit out your answer in ksi, MPa, etc. on its own. You might be able to do something similar on a number of other devices.
 
TI 34 is a $20 solar calculator that should do everything a high school math student needs. Unless you need a full on graphing calculator. I like it because it is, I belive, four lines on the display. I it stays in digital display not scientific for me. Longer display them most. It is a ten digit display not eight like most.
The second function access is a little harder to get to then some.
Bill D
 
Never liked TI much, probably because they seem to own the market. Though I love RPN, for a normal calculator that does everything and doesn't break the bank, try one of the Sharps. I use an older EL-W516 but the newest one seems to have the same functions- Amazon.com : Sharp Calculators EL-W535TGBBL 16-Digit Scientific Calculator with WriteView, 4 Line Display, Battery and Solar Hybrid Powered LCD Display, Black & Blue, Black, Blue, 6.4" x 3.1" x 0.6" x 6.4" : Office Products

2nd function-setup, FSE, FIX, enter 0-9 digits and Bob's your uncle.
 
Consider a Casio fx-260 solar, which sells for about $US 10 at any of the "big box" office supply stores.

The fx-260 is small enough to fit all the way into a shirt pocket, and leaves room for a couple of pens / pencils and a 6 inch steel rule.

I tried of carrying a HP-48 in the mid 1990s, and found a Casio fx-260 met all of my go-to-meeting and sanity-check calculation needs as a manufacturing-test engineer.
 
Am I missing something here? What else do you want the calculator to do? I've always preferred
Sharp calculators because of their keyboard configuation. Right now I've got an EL-510RT which
cost me about fifteen bucks in a drugstore.

I just tried it--multiplied two five decimal place numbers together and it spit out the answer with nine
decimal places...
 
OP is not looking for decimal precision, but rather a way to display decimal numbers much smaller than zero without reverting to scientific notation.

Seems there's no love for ENG notation among the rest of y'all, even though it exactly matches how we say numbers out loud. Nobody says .00001, instead you'd say "ten millionths." Well, ENG notation would spit out your answer just like that, 10e-6 is ten millionths.

Scientific notation is too hard to parse quickly, who cares that there's only one number before the decimal, anyway? Most people's brains are trained to think in cohorts of 1000s, bigger or smaller and you jump to the next set of 10^3 and start working within that range.
 
I use these - they are like 12 bucks and work great - keep one at every desk/table in the shop so you don't have to run in circles looking for where you left it last.

IMG-3170.jpg


IMG-3171.jpg
 
TI-84 allows you to configure your preferred decimal length and notation. Though as mentioned it may be a little bulky and overkill for the OP's needs.

...Though the ability to write your own TI-BASIC programs right inside the calculator UI is kind of neat if you've got repetitive tasks to deal with.

TI-30s work pretty well, though I don't use the advanced functions on them simply because I'm more comfortable and versed with the 84.

Or else a perfectly good excuse to buy a sweet DRO. :)
 
jim rozen said:
I *always* write plank's constant out long-hand.....!
Click to expand...

Long hand? Still don't get it, I see.

6.626e-34 or 626.6e-36 makes little practical difference because it is so far outside of our normal physical range of use.


On the other hand, how much pressure is 1.013e5 Pa?

How about 101.3e3 Pa?


They are both 101.3 kPa, one atmosphere. Which one is more immediately identifiable as such, and which one takes a handful of brain cycles to figure?


Let's do another example: how long ago did the last dinosaur roam the earth?

If you said 65 million years, you'd be a normal person!

If you said 6.5 tens-of-millions of years, you might like scientific notation!
 
4GSR said:
Old school HP32. That's all I use period! :D
Click to expand...
41CV !! With the libraries of programs !

BoxcarPete said:
Most people's brains are trained to think in cohorts of 1000s, bigger or smaller and you jump to the next set of 10^3 and start working within that range.
Click to expand...
Chinese has a word for 10,000 and unfortunately they use it. A hundred and twenty thousand is twelve ten-thousands, pain in the ass to mentally translate all the time :(
 
Thanks for you input. My TI-83+ is getting retired for probably a TI-30. I believe I have one in a desk at home. I should have just checked before making this post but it always slips my mind after i punch out.
 
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