Anyone have any recommendations on good calculators appropriate for UIL Calculator competitions these days?
Reverse notation?

When I did calculator in high school (2006 state champ, lol), standard was to have two calculators, one RPN and then the most powerful graphing calculator you knew how to use. At the time it was the hp33s and the TI-89. The RPN is so you can blaze through the number crunchers left to right and not have to mentally parse the order of operations first and for the word problems/geometry problems that you've mastered to the level you can work through them almost robotically, and then you call on the graphing calculator for anywhere you wind up setting up an integral or equation that is easier to let the graphing calculator solve numerically.

Looks like these days it's the HP35s for the RPN calculator and the TI nSpire for the graphing.

akaggie05 said:

---

Glad to see the HP 32SII still representing. That was the go-to back in the mid 90s. Won many ribbons and a few trophies at TMSCA events with it.

---

Still was the go to in the mid-2000s, despite the more powerful 33s being out there. I remember them being considerably more expensive used on eBay back then than a brand new 33s.

Honest question, is this a real thing or not?

I still regularly use my 32SII. I have a 35S, but the freaking 9 button doesn't work unless you get it just right. I've also got a 50g for when things get hardcore.

I was never very good at the contest, but our team got 3rd at district one time.

I think this thread is even too nerdy for the nerdery

falconace said:

---

I think this thread is even too nerdy for the nerdery

---

The bus ride to the state championship every year in San Antonio was lit! We were cool!

akaggie05 said:

---

falconace said:

---

I think this thread is even too nerdy for the nerdery

---

The bus ride to the state championship every year in San Antonio was lit! We were cool!

---

I remember the UIL calculator competition. I accidentally lost a lot of points by having two pages of my test book stick together without me noticing, and got docked for "skipping" those problems.

Fortunately, I was also in the UIL Mathematics contest, and ended up getting 12th place in the state. That's how I got my largest scholarship.