I am writing this list of calculators with the less financially able person in mind. I’ve met many a person earning $1-2 per day just because of their countries situation. What do we do here? Somehow though, a large chunk of you are acquiring smart phones which will have access to the web based calculators. The calculation power is handled at the server end and you just see the results. An absolutely amazing advancement. Either way, this is a list starting from the most affordable.
- For those with a smart phone, you may already realise you’ve a basic calculator app inbuilt.
- Then of course you can type most mathematical questions into Google.
- After that Wolfram Alpha is an excellent website.
- There’s a piece of software called Matlab which is incredibly powerful. Great for matrices and statistics. There are several freeware versions. The one I used a bit was called Octave.
- The Casio 9860G AU is what I use a lot. It’s old now, and I’m sure they’ve improved a lot since this model. TI – (Texas instruments) has some great calculators as well. I didn’t believe it when I bought it, but yes, all the extra strange looking keys are useful on these devices.
- If you’ve access to a desktop computer then Scientific Workplace works well. It also allows you to cleanly step through complex problems and print them cleanly on an A4 sheet of paper. Very useful if you’ve long equations and are just changing one variable for each iteration.
- The Raspberry Pi budget computer installed with Raspbian has Wolfram Alpha installed as an application. I’ve not used it yet, but it’s there.