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Most common calculators in the forum?
11-30-2017, 02:13 PM
Post: #51
RE: Most common calculators in the forum?
Updated so far until the post quoted below.

(11-30-2017 03:38 AM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  Who cares?
Me, statistics and forum history. Is it enough? https://i0.wp.com/media4.giphy.com/media.../giphy.gif

For example I am getting surprised by the distribution, so statistics may help change some views or getting interested in some models, etc.

Quote:Also, that the 50g and Prime aren't as popular as you thought they'd be because this is a vintage HP calculator website targeted at HP calculators introduced between 1968 and 1986.
I am not sure how to interpret this passage.
For my perspective it seems like "here we discuss systems sold between 1968 and 1986, the rest is not welcomed". If I am not wrong (and I hope I am), I can accept that you have this view but I don't agree on it. It sounds too much like gate keeping.

For me a museum collects history (that is: the recorded past), and yesterday is history too (if someone recorded something yesterday).
Furthermore I can understand that having mixed discussions about the HP 35 or the prime is not the best, but that was the case with the previous forum organization. With the new forum, you choose the section that you like and that is.
Also with the new forum (and with proper titles), you just ignore what you are not interested in (like I did with many 41 topics) without risking that interesting topics on the systems that you like gets archived tomorrow.

I also believe many people that have the prime do not see this section, therefore we see low numbers (and I "killed" the report of applications, that are the most common solution nowadays. If I introduce the applications I guess the Prime wins hands down, together with Free42)

Aside from the points above, surely having more members, due to the larger span of calculators covered (well, TI/casio and co are not really covered), may decrease the quality of the posts. One can empirically prove this on many social networks, some reddit communities are especially good at this.
Nonetheless if the community is "controlling itself" (i.e: uninteresting spam(i) gets nuked) one can get only new perspectives and activities that are interesting. For example math problems that can be solved with the 50g, the prime or the 41, and an interesting math problem can come from any passionate member, also without calculators.

Quote:It could be argued that the 12C is the most popular HP calculator as it's been in production for over 30 years, but that's because of the business community and most of us have technical backgrounds and favor the scientific models.
I partially agree here. Because surely a product that is sold en masse is likely to be common, but the point is also another: how many that bought a calculator keep using it and let it work.
In the 1970-1980-1990 maybe was common that people would care about their calculators, but today it is likely that they won't care much and those get wasted. Therefore asking for working calculators may bring surprises.
But even if people care about their calculators, time will slowly break down everything.

For example about the 41 (that so far has a solid 1st place thanks to S. Cote): it was produced between 1979 and 1990 (quick info from the wiki). So even newer models have 27 years. Who ensures that they are still working?

That is surprising, not that there are 40+ models of the 41 and variations, but that there are that many - compared to other models - that are still working.

I would like to know the results of a similar survey in 2019, 2021 and so on. Sooner or later they will stop working, I think. So would be interesting to track the change of the distribution in different years.

(i) uninteresting for the majority, not only for you (or for me).

Wikis are great, Contribute :)
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Messages In This Thread
RE: Most common calculators in the forum? - pier4r - 11-30-2017 02:13 PM
That the truth be told - hp41cx - 12-02-2017, 07:31 PM
Dave Frederickson - hp41cx - 12-02-2017, 11:17 PM



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