Re: And finally - a simulator for the HP32E. Message #4 Posted by hugh steers on 4 May 2009, 9:41 a.m., in response to message #1 by Mike T.
Awesome!
I really liked the 32e, it was my first HP calculator. I bought it new when I was in college, it was much more expensive than offerings from casio or TI at the time, but I liked it. The construction was superior and although it offered only the usual scientific functions, the competitor scientific models had less.
Hyperbolic functions and unit conversions were there too, stats worked well and I genuinely wanted the Q function for real use. I remember, even though we all used calculators, everyone else was forced to resort to tables for their normal distributions. It was an eerie throwback watching them.
Furthermore, you were lucky to get 5 figures out of the tables, but the 32e was giving a full 10 figure accurate result – almost instantly. It was a remarkable achievement and I was always puzzled why HP couldn’t carry Q and invQ on to their later models.
invQ appeared to work through a convergent iteration. It took about 10 seconds or so. It always got the right answer though. I never actually needed this for real work, but it was always fascinating.
Thanks for making the simulator!
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