Is RPN still relevant?

[Philk27]

(12-17-2023 03:36 PM)ttw Wrote:  Many years ago (in the 1970s), I would give a few nighttime seminars for students wanting to learn to use calculators. I found that most had algebraic calculators but that all of them found the RPN a bit more intuitive. This may seem funny but the difference is in looking at an expression and doing the operations. The RPN mimics one "evaluate from the inside out" rather well. Calculation isn't the same as notation.

With programmable calculators, we found (fooling around with expressions in early versions) that the number of keystrokes in RPN was around 1/2 to 2/3 that of algebraic; mostly because of not having to enter parethesis. I remember using (a now forgotten) continued fraction expression for estimating interest rates that took about 100 keystrokes in RPN but over 200 in algebraic.

This is exactly what’s brought me out of lurker mode and onto the Forum after many years! Covid saw me going back to un, and in teaching thm RPN they began to “grok” the maths much faster, even when it was purely symbolic maths. RPN was like a window into their own operating systems and sit at a framework to hang the maths on. For this crowd, being able to see the Stack is an absolute imperative! (And being a little bit neurospicy myself, that’s my experience, too).