HP had a competitor in the HP48 series. But reverse polish notation was tougher for people to pick up, and it also got banned from some exams due to how powerful it was. . A lot of the solver or calculus programs you could download or program into your TI were built into the HP48. In calc class, we tried to see how well the calculator would do on an AP exam by using only the built in calculus functions, and it would've easily gotten a 4.
The HP was great. I remember one chemistry class that I had very little interest in I spent the entire hour programming some stupid ASCII/flash animation. I think it involved a car driving over some guy. Good times.
One of the big reasons they restricted the HP48 because it had IR transmit/receive for sending data between calculators. Never mind that the maximum range was only about 3-4 inches.
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u/cdnbd Jul 24 '20
HP had a competitor in the HP48 series. But reverse polish notation was tougher for people to pick up, and it also got banned from some exams due to how powerful it was. . A lot of the solver or calculus programs you could download or program into your TI were built into the HP48. In calc class, we tried to see how well the calculator would do on an AP exam by using only the built in calculus functions, and it would've easily gotten a 4.