"I am not sure how many people will run AI models locally. It still seems like a niche application to me."
Clip me :). You are currently living through the final stages of unrestricted computing in the hands of the 'public'. Our regimes are going to pull up the drawbridge in the name of 'safety'. Download the open models asap and prepare for an airgapped computing environment. That will be your frontier in not extremely neutered AI in the near future.
A famous MIT professor did a sabatical at our AI lab. He said it was "a joy to teach here, as you can rely on students being proficient in basic math as opposed to the US where you have to teach those explicitly or lose the class completely".
That was in the 1980s.
My first math exam as a CS undergraduate, 123 out of 129 students failed. The math department professors refused to dumb down their classes for CS students.
Math was core to the CS curicullum in those days. It would fade away over the next few decades to almost nothing. The main reason being the CS department wanted to popularize its uptake, and remove barriers that kept students from passing. There was also a major dose of interdepartemenral rivalry and academic politiking involved.
To be honest, there’s approximately zero reasons to teach major-grade math to just about anyone but math majors. None of the applied math disciplines need go that deep, and what they do need depends on the field (physics is all about analysis, CS is about algebra and discrete math, and so on).
My CS program required one year of upper division math. But you could take anything (I took set theory and meta-logic from the philosophy department, it was actually pretty hard!). They did not care about the specific math skills, they wanted us to have a level of mathematical formalism and reasoning, which was in fact important for the CS classes.
Mine required very specific courses, including Discrete Math, which I scraped by in. Almost 15 years later and I have never needed any of the upper level math I was forced to take and wish I could have just taken more applied CS classes instead.
These things are all true but in the end the most transformative AI results came from US labs with US university trained students, so one must ask what the purpose of a more difficult pedagogy is if it doesn’t lead to humanity’s greater knowledge.
Who is the audience for this? I was a big fan of HP calculators at the time. Guilty of RPN snobbery and in posession of the passed by nth generation photocopy 'synthetic programming' document. I still have my 41CV even though it has not been turned on in 20 years.
But a fake lookalike 'collectors edition' of a device that can have only nostalgic sentimental value? Why does this exist? Who falls for this?
I use HP calculators every day. 12C for most common tasks, 25 in the workshop (it can be operated one-handed!), 15C or 50G for more complex tasks involving units.
Calculators are very useful, using them is a forgotten art. While it no longer makes sense to plot anything on a calculator (I use Mathematica for that), it is still a great tool.
I have a 16C and I use it, but only when developing embedded software where I need to wiggle bits. It is very useful for that, especially with one-key switching between bases (HEX/BIN/DEC).
I can't answer your question regarding the 16c, but the 12c is still the most convenient tool I have for compounding maths.
I can technically do the same thing with Emacs Calc, but there's something about the physical layout of the buttons that just makes sense. I suppose I could also use a software simulator of the 12c, though.
I have always preferred some kind of physical calculator for doing calculations. I never need to do excruciatingly complex math, but I have a cherished TI-34 from the early 90's that I have dragged through college and 3 jobs. Full scientific calculator function with 0 batteries, it runs just on its tiny solar panel and the soul-sucking fluorescent office lighting, which is the one feature that keeps me clung to this particular model.
If I saw an original one for sale for 10 credits or less I'd probably buy it as a curiosity piece, but no more than that. I do use a desk calculator but still have my trusty Casio that I bought over 20 years ago.
It’s not a fake, it is made by HP. Also, it has value as a calculator, not just nostalgic sentimental value. It works just as well as the original.
I own one because a while ago I bought, one by one, iconic world changing calculators to collect. I like having physical history. This re-release seems like a very nice bookend to that collection.
It is not made by HP, it is made by Moravia Consulting in the Czech Republic under an official license from HP. HP's Calculator Division hasn't been a part of HP's actual org chart since before even the HP/HPE split. It's the modern world thing where corporate brand names stopped aligning with corporate org charts decades ago.
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