So I'm going back to school in the fall, and am taking a Trig class as a refresher over the summer (first time in a non-military classroom in 10 years), which means I have to buy a graphing calculator. I had an HP 48G in high school and loved it, but I know the TI line is quite good too. My long-term study plan involved an Engineering major, most likely Electrical, Computer, or something along those lines, so obviously vector plotting is going to be important. I'm not afraid of learning to USE the calculator, as opposed to "push this button to make this happen" so I want to know which is really going to be the best value and most useful long-term, a TI or HP.

Any thoughts?

I dunno, mate... I think just wrapping your head around the expressions, formulas, etc is the way to go--Excel can handle the rest.

The few graphing calculators I've seen people with were TI, but a scientific calculator got me through trig, calculus, statistics, and various sciences. In my experience, graphing calculators were never allowed in university or even junior/senior year highschool. Every highschool teacher that I had was of the opinion that graphing calculators were a waste of money, so we got used to eyeballing the numbers. In university classes, I've never seen the topic brought up at all.

Most teachers (again, my experience) said the better solution was to buy a laptop and put Excel on it. Sure they're more expensive, but they give you more bang for your buck by doing more than just one thing.

My two cents


P.S.:
This program might come in handy. Dealing with vectors and relative motion, it helped me by turning a problem into a "battle problem". Tired of hearing about the question about those two trains? Turn 'em into a fleet boat making a move on a heavily-escorted convoy!
Electronic Maneuvering Board

i don`t know what kind of school sockeye went to

in high school, my school issued hp48gs for anyone that was taking calc 1 or higher

i bought my own hp48g which was extremely useful in both my chemical engineering undergrad at maryland and grad school at penn state

my hp48g still works perfectly now and its basically 17 years old. so i highly recommend the hp48g or the newer versions if u are going to some kind of engineering program

I used a TI-83 Plus for all of my math classes. Its not that expensive and does the stuff you would need. You can even write programs for it. It can also download applications if you have the USB cable for it.

TI seems to be pretty much the standard these days. If you aren't going to be doing any calculus or beyond, get a Ti-83 Plus or -84, if you're going to be doing calculus+ I'd get a -89.

Edit: Missed the engineering major part. Go for the Ti-89. Though these days, I imagine you'll be using Maple or Mathematica for any computations in advanced courses, but the -89 will still be helpful going through the various calculus classes and so on.

I second what Speedo said.

And while looking at engineering disciplines, don't overlook Software Engineering

TI-83 all the way. Had to have mine for senior-level agricultural engineering classes and I paid so damn much for it, I swore I wouldn't sell it, no matter if I were starving in the street.

Still have damned thing.

@ NavyNuke: 10 years since you've been in a civvie classroom? God, are you ever in for a shock. After a bachelor's and a master's, I'm actually going back for an associate's in something useful, network administration. Let us know how it goes.

pfunk

I intend to specialize in Topology after grad school so I have to admit early on that I rarely use calculators now (if ever).

But there was a time when I was in Actuarial Science, so Texas Instruments gets another thumbs up from me. IIRC it's even required for taking their exams.

Hyman George Rickover just rolled over in his grave. Where's your pencil and slide rule?

Funny you mention that, actually. In the nuclear power pipeline we were only allowed to use a TI-36 at the very most. I saw a slide rule once in Power School- in the model room next to a Motor- Generator set from a 40 year-old sub. Then again, the day to day calculations we made mostly involved mental math or algebra pulling data off pre-printed graphs in the manuals. Even though I took Calc in high school, the only application was graphing integrals and derivatives for tracking some reactor parameters- but they wanted us to do that "The Navy Way" as Rickover had decreed, now and forever, amen.

Cool, I have my father's slide rule as sort of an antique.

I'm already about to enter into a Doctorate in Mathematics. Abstract topics like the ones in REal Analysis, "Abstract" Algebra, Projective spaces, Closure spaces, graph theory, number theory and descriptive set theory require logical proofs instead of low level arithmetic using calculators. It's something of a divide between applied Math and Pure(Philosophical) Mathematics.

Thanks to this thread, I'm already searching for my TI calculators and reviewing applied math in my current spare time.

TI-89 is definitely the standard these days. I went through high school with a Ti-82, then college with an -83. The major thing the -89 can do over the other models is integrate functionally, which is a big plus. On earlier models, telling the calculate to integrate something would give you a numerical answer for certain input parameters. The Ti-89 can take an input equation and spit out another equation, which can be very handy.

My first TI was a TI-30 LED
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-30

My last was/is a TI-30III
The TI-30III was purchased in 1985. The original batteries are still working, what a run!!



There's even a Emulator for the TI-30! Neat.
http://www.friedemann-seebass.de/dwnld_e.html

I still have my TI-30 from when I was a medical student.

I still have an HP-48g that I had in highschool. Very nice calculator and I used it up to my junior year in college, aerospace engineering. It started choking on the more complicated equations about that time. I tried using one of my friends Ti's for awhile, but was only frustrated because reverse polish notation is in my muscle memory.

I ended up buying a midrange laptop and puting octave on it (freeware similar to MatLab). It could handle just about anything I could throw at it in my master's program (except my CFD research). Plus its easy to transfer plots into reports and presentations.

I don't recall seeing anyone using a calculator in the mechanical or aerospace engineering program at my school at a graduate level. Its all laptops and computer clusters.

I had no problems with my Casio 9850... had it for years and keep it with me most of the time. I wanted to get the TI at that time but decided on the Casio. The Casio seemed to have more features and it 's "color". Oh yeah, and it was cheaper too...

Yeah, I'm kind of afraid the same thing is going to be the case with me. Once you get the hang of it, it's really hard to go back.

(1984-I had this one in High School and first year of Jr. College)
TI-55 ii

(1985-When I was an Electronics Major) Great calculator for it's time but sold it to a classmate as I loathed the RPN (Reverse Polish Notation entry)
HP-42S

(1987-When I was a Laser Electro-Optics Major) Learned to program Basic on this thing in the 1980s and even wrote a crude calculator program with it as an assignment in 1986.
Tandy TRS-80

(1991-Used it when I went back to school and was a Computer Science Major) I still have this one and it works great.
TI-85

I still have and use a TI-85, though just for everyday math, I don't touch the advanced stuff on it these days.

Majority of folks use Ti-x graphing calc. (x= <80$)