Re: The Dumbest Generation: AOS vs RPN Message #9 Posted by Don Shepherd on 23 June 2009, 9:42 a.m., in response to message #1 by Joerg Woerner
Quote: It is easy to predict: "RPN is almost dead!"
From a marketing perspective, I'm sure TI wished this to be true. Has it happened, in 2009? Is RPN "almost dead?" By whatever indicator we attempt to evaluate this, if we're going to be honest, isn't the answer "yes?"
Indicators:
- number of people who actually use (and understand) RPN
- number of calculator manufacturers who build RPN machines
- number of books describing how to use RPN
- number of classes that teach RPN
- sales of RPN calculators versus AOS and others
Now, members of this forum like RPN for many different reasons. Personally, I like it because it enables me to exercise my mind by writing programs for HP calculators to solve problems. I find RPN keystroke programming very similar to assembly language, which was the first programming language I learned way back in 1968 for the IBM 360. I loved assembly language because of its logic and because it required you to understand the actual hardware to a degree that higher-level languages did not. When I went to work in the industry, however, I never used assembly language; I used FORTRAN and COBOL. So my appreciation of RPN is based upon my affection for assembly language.
HP has always touted RPN as the "natural" way to do calculating, based upon how we do it manually and as we were taught in school. But I have always had a problem with that. We are taught to do pencil and paper math this way:
12
+ 3
____
15
That is, we write down the first number, go down to the next line and write a +, write the second number on the same line as the +, then draw a line and do our actual work under that line. The operator doesn't come last, it actually comes before the second number. The last line we draw corresponds, essentially, to the = key. And that's how AOS calculators work, which is probably why they outnumber RPN calculators by a rather large factor.
I appreciate RPN because it provides a logic system that enables keystroke programming to work, and I enjoy keystroke programming. But if anyone actually believes that teaching RPN to school kids is what we need to do to save the newest generation from itself, I think that is wrong.
As a teacher for the past few years, I am keenly aware of how kids are more interested in their ipods than in learning long division. But when I was in junior high school, I was more interested in the Beatles than world history too. But most of us did OK in the world, and I believe that will happen to the current generation also.
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