Scientific Calculator

November 6 2012

Everyone would have used the object shown in the picture. I was introduced to this brick like device when I was in class 11. 

My mathematics teacher "Mudali Appan" made an announcement in class - "Tomorrow all of you should bring a scientific calculator to class". We obeyed him religiously. 

We felt like scientists when we carried the scientific calculator. During those days, if a person owned a scientific calculator he was called a gadget freak. 

Days went by and few of my classmates became efficient in using the scientific calculator. I was only comfortable with the bottom 4 rows of keys in it. I could  do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division using it. But when it came to integration and differentiation, I had great difficulty. 

The top four rows of keys seemed like rocket science to me. In exams we were allowed to use the scientific calculator. But when the exam invigilator came near us to see what we were writing in the answer sheet, I would press lot of buttons in the calculator and would scribble some number in the answer sheet. Once the invigilator leaves, I would give a sigh of relief.

Days went by and I entered college to do three years of computer science. Soon we were asked to use the calculator to do Laplace, Fourier series applications. Chits and bits with answers were hidden inside the sliding cover of the calculator and they helped a lot during our exams. But after using the calculator for 5 long years we did not know the real use of it. 

I can see many readers telling me "Why Blood? Same Blood!" as they read this article. 

Moral : Even if you own half the world, if you do not know how to use it, it is no different from a person like us using a scientific calculator.

Note: I used my scientific calculator now to add two numbers ( 32 and 43) and I got 56 as the answer. GENIASS indeed.