(Footnotes)

1.Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) is an efficient data-entry system that can significantly reduce keystrokes. Click here for more information about RPN

2.CFP® is a registered trademark of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. CFA is a registered trademark of the CFA Institute. The CFA Institute is not affiliated with Hewlett-Packard and does not endorse or warrant the company or its products. Recommended for use by the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP FRM™) for the Financial Risk Management Certification.

Fun facts about the HP 12c Financial Calculator:

•Born: September 16, 1981

•It uses a 4 bit 125Khz CPU with 5 56 bit registers and has used the same the CPU for over 26 years.

•The first handheld calculator to receive certification by the federal Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) due to it’s sophisticated accurate and precise calculation algorithms

•Over 15 million of the HP 12c series calculators have been sold

•The ROM code is only 6000 instructions long and it performs over 100 functions.

•Due to clever programming the calculator can perform complex financial functions despite the fact that the only actual operations the microprocessor can calculate are addition and subtraction on integers (numbers without comas).

•The CPU is power-efficient with less than 40K transistors. In comparison, an Intel Pentium CPU has 582 millions transistors or 14550 times more

•Price at introduction: USD$150

Click here for more information about the HP 12c Financial Calculator.

Click here for a detailed history of the HP 12c

RPN Tip #2

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Human data entry is error prone and this is primary reason machine readable bar codes are used on nearly everything these days. The four-high automatic RPN stack is easy to master and it may be used to avoid having to enter numbers related to a problem more than once.

Suppose you need to evaluate the expression (A2 + 3A) ⎟ 1.3 with an A value of 2.918273645. You could solve the problem three ways.

1.You could press 2.918273645, ENTER, ENTER, ×, X<>Y, 3, ×, +, 1.3, ⎟ to calculate 13.2854938478. (seven keystrokes)

2.The experienced RPN user would press 2.918273645, X^2, LASTX, 3, ×, +, 1.3, ⎟ to calculate 13.2854938478. (six keystrokes)

The latter method disturbs the stack less and uses fewer keystrokes.

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