RPN option for school children

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H2X
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Re: RPN option for school children

Post by H2X »

dm319 wrote:
Mon May 08, 2023 7:32 pm
H2X wrote:
Sun May 07, 2023 6:07 pm
Children of what age?
We have GCSEs (16 yrs) and A-levels (18 yrs) here in the UK - those are the main exams students buy calculators for, and the main market targetted by Casio etc...
So they will presumably start working towards the GCSE a year or two before it - will they typically use the same calculator for A-level, or not?
What is the metric tensor in imperial units?
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dm319
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Re: RPN option for school children

Post by dm319 »

H2X wrote:
Tue May 09, 2023 6:23 am
So they will presumably start working towards the GCSE a year or two before it - will they typically use the same calculator for A-level, or not?
Thinking back I had this Sharp calculator, and somewhere along the way I ended up with this one. So yes, I suspect there will be an upgrade at some point there. In my school a lot of kids went to the TI-83 who did further maths.

Standard issue was this Casio. I didn't do further maths but I suspect that this calculator would have been ok for that even.
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redglyph
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Re: RPN option for school children

Post by redglyph »

dm319 wrote:
Sat May 06, 2023 3:11 pm
Just to continue a 5 year old thread now that there is an HP-15c and DM-32 on the way. Assuming parents are crazy enough to allow their kid to take very expensive pocket calculators into school and risk them getting lost, what calculators are actually going to be allowable for children these days?
If you're talking about exams, the HP Prime seems to be accepted, thanks to the exam mode. It's not what I'd buy, and it's even less what I'd buy for kids going at school, but maybe the exam mode idea is good.

When you're going to take a scientific or mathematical orientation at school, you're going to accumulate many "recipes" to solve problems. It doesn't make sense to repeat those operations manually in this era, when everything is automated, made easier to the users, and when the calculators often offer a programming mode and registers. Why should we buy two calculators when it's possible to make a relatively cheap one that has an exam mode and a small LED to indicate it? The other benefit is showing the teachers exactly what it is, without them having to check every model in the classroom.

It's a good solution for both the parents and the teachers. Other calculators than the expensive and unfinished HP Prime have it: the Casio fx-9750GIII, for example (I have no idea if it's good). There must be others.

As for the RPN mode, I'm not sure that it fits the current trend. Why would teenagers or students bother to "think" RPN when most interfaces are becoming natural and intuitive?
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Walter
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Re: RPN option for school children

Post by Walter »

redglyph wrote:
Mon May 22, 2023 9:22 am
Why would teenagers or students bother to "think" RPN when most interfaces are becoming natural and intuitive?
We may all concur that thinking hurts - but learning to think and having thought may be beneficial in real life later on. I know it's unpopular, and I did hate that being a teenager but nevertheless: NON SCHOLAE SED VITAE DISCIMVS.
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Re: RPN option for school children

Post by DA74254 »

Walter wrote:
Mon May 22, 2023 9:28 am
redglyph wrote:
Mon May 22, 2023 9:22 am
Why would teenagers or students bother to "think" RPN when most interfaces are becoming natural and intuitive?
We may all concur that thinking hurts - but learning to think and having thought may be beneficial in real life later on. I know it's unpopular, and I did hate that being a teenager but nevertheless: NON SCHOLAE SED VITAE DISCIMVS.
:D
I remember one of the motormen I had at work, when he thought of continue education to be a fullblown ships mechanical engineer. I opened the "really nasty" page in the formulae book we used (the formula collections for thermodynamics).
He looked over the formulaes and expressed; "When I see this, I feel that I become very pissed off and my brain hurts!" :)
He is a very good motorman though, but becoming a certified engineer was an idea permanently abandoned there and then..
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redglyph
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Re: RPN option for school children

Post by redglyph »

Walter wrote:
Mon May 22, 2023 9:28 am
We may all concur that thinking hurts - but learning to think and having thought may be beneficial in real life later on. I know it's unpopular, and I did hate that being a teenager but nevertheless: NON SCHOLAE SED VITAE DISCIMVS.
I think that's a reflex we all have when we see how kids are now. It's similar to the language - why make an effort when it's easier to modify the language and invent exotic names?

And it was already expressed by people like Cicero and Plato... It didn't turn out so badly though, so perhaps we need to ponder.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a strong believer in good bases: Latin, ancient Greek, study of ancient civilizations and history, engineering build on top of solid and fundamental knowledge (physics, chemistry, maths). And I like RPN. But it doesn't mean that it's the only way to get there, or the most important things to know for everyone.

More to the point, I don't think that RPN is a tool for life, nor that people not using it are not making any effort to think. Having to think differently to use a tool is a distraction, what counts is what we do with those tools, at a higher level where our intellect is more valuable. Not that RPN is very hard, but I can understand why it's seen as an unnecessary complication when you can type the equation naturally and see it properly on a screen. :)
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OlidaBel
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Re: RPN option for school children

Post by OlidaBel »

RPN may be a thing of the past. Nevertheless, using the stack to calculate always remains pleasant and efficient, also in RPL.
Moreover, today I don't know how to replace small tools programmed in RPN. How to solve these questions for a young student or young engineer without a computer in 2023?
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Re: RPN option for school children

Post by redglyph »

OlidaBel wrote:
Mon May 22, 2023 10:41 am
RPN may be a thing of the past. Nevertheless, using the stack to calculate always remains pleasant and efficient, also in RPL.
Moreover, today I don't know how to replace small tools programmed in RPN. How to solve these questions for a young student or young engineer without a computer in 2023?
That's a good question. I've only owned HP programmable calculators, but TI and other brands have been programmable too so I suppose there must be a similar language, just not RPN. And today, many calculators allow to enter equations literally, so the need for programming may be reduced somewhat, though not entirely. I had a lot of little programs on my HP48, for polynomials, more specialized matrix operations and so on, which I'm sure are still necessary.

Some calculators implement a reduced version of the Python language. It's a nice language but I'm not sure it's easy to type the extra mile on a calculator keypad, or that it's the most energy-efficient for little batteries. :D
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Walter
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Re: RPN option for school children

Post by Walter »

Much of what was covered by programmable calculators until the Nineteeneighties or so is done by Excel et al. nowadays. I see a niche for RPN calcs in scientific and engineering applications in the lab or in the field, where missing space and ruggedness are crucial. Such calcs have to be handy tools: take them, key in your problems, and get to answers in a comprehensible, reliable way. Must be no rocket science. But that's actually off topic here where we should talk about school children ...

Whether school children will profit from RPN or not that's the question. Math is a challenge for most of them, thus I doubt that the RPN method will catch them although it's more coherent (but you have to be able to grasp its coherence). And don't forget that such a school calculator shall carry a price tag far lower than any RPN calculator carried so far. At the bottom line, I have sincere doubts.

True students are another cup of tea. Unless they are spoiled by hacking in textbook equations and expecting THE answer after pressing [=], they should be flexible enough to check RPN themselves and then choose based on their own experience. Hence an entry 'scientific' RPN calculator model must not carry a forbidding price tag out of reach for students. Any company striving for a significant revenue with RPN will inevitably need these students and young professionals, else it will go the way of the dodo bird with this generation.
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Re: RPN option for school children

Post by H2X »

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Last edited by H2X on Mon Jun 12, 2023 4:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.
What is the metric tensor in imperial units?
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