I submitted an Ask HN a few months back about handheld calculators: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36975021
There are some great comments and discussions there.
I ended up buying the Casio fx-991 ES PLUS as a result.
There are some great comments and discussions there.
I ended up buying the Casio fx-991 ES PLUS as a result.
Includes beautiful UI (roots, exponents and fractions are displayed like we write them, so more is visible, and the navigation is easier), spreadsheets, printing out values of a real function, solving any real equation for X (one solution at a time, gotta give it different starting Xs for optimization, though), some very basic probability (Gauss) statistics (e.g. linear regression), up to 4x4 matrices, finding derivative in a point, sum over a range, integral over an interval, arithmetic with complex numbers etc.
It doesn't render graphs, but, it renders a qr code that a phone can scan and then the phone shows the graph, so some graphing is there for studying, but not an exam.
Practically speaking, I probably would have been better off getting a much simpler calculator with bigger number buttons. But I do love the aesthetic of the scientific calculator, it seems to hold so much potential.