Who uses the hp 12-C? I only knew a couple and they were old school MD types.
F this place is boring today.
Everyone I work with uses 12-C. I tell them it is a dinosaur and use Excel and my TI-84 (BAII for CFA). They call me an inexperienced youngin’
Think of RPN as portable Excel. You enter the numbers like you would enter a number into a cell in excel and then you use the operator button to tell it what to do. e.g. 3 * 2 ===> 3 [enter] 2 [*] = 6.
Take this simple problem for example: [(3*2)+(4*8)]^2
You don’t need to use parenthesis or write down the answers to intermediate portions of the equation becuase it stores the intermediate answers in the memory stacks and automatically drops them down as you work through the equation, whereas with the TI you would have to either write down or manually store and recall the intermediate answers, unless you have a good memory. This problem above is of course simple but is good to demonstrate the power of RPN. Also there is no [=] button. You enter the above formula into your calculator as follows:
3 [enter]
2 [*]
4 [enter]
8 [*]
[+]
2 [y^x]
Result: 1,444.0
^ Respect
One of the two calculators permitted to be used on the CFA Exams is the HP 12C, and apart from the fact that its name sounds like some highly involved consulting framework, it is the epitome of Banker technology. The 12C embodies everything about us—elegant, bold, somehow clinging on to life in a world that no longer needs it. One look at its brushed plastic exterior and you think: “Damn, this thing is pro.”
Excel Mobile, it speaks a pure, unambiguous language: Reverse Polish, a postfix notation that eliminates non-commutative issues. So instead of having to enter 7 + (5 * 2) – 5, you’d enter: 7 5 2 * + 5 -. Direct and to the point, crisp even—exactly how Bankers think and speak. I met a model from Kraków once, and although we hit it off physically, her English struggled, blocking us from that real “same plane” level I like to reach. So as a gesture of cultural sensitivity, I decided I’d speak to her in something closer to her native tongue. Over Lil’s Wayne’s Lollipop, I pointed between us aggressively and instructed: “You, friends, 2, TIMES PLUS… panties MINUS“ Boom. “Same plane,” said her eyes.
Plus, the 12c has macro recording/programming capability…
I have portable Excel. it’s called a laptop.
it also has portable Word, portable Powerpoint, and portable Schweser Q-Bank.
Not to mention chess and Spider Solitaire.
The 12c is also indestructible. One time when I was shopping for a car in a bad section of town, I was shot at close range by a dude with a Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolver, chambered for a .44 Magnum cartridge, and the round hit my 12c (I always carry it in the breast pocket of my short-sleeve dress shirt). Not only did the 12c stop the round and save my life, but I was still able to calculate my car payment.
^Respect.
The BAII Plus would have left our boy Higgy dead on the block.
The 12C is definitely generational. I’d estimate that only those born pre-1975 are likely users.
I was born in 81 and use it. I used the TI while doing my MSF and made the switch when I started studying for level I, purely on the base that everything I read said RPN was faster, plus the calculator looked so quality.
RPN is how a computer thinks through math. It’s definitely faster.
Plus, you’ll get a lot of brownie points from senior managers.
Nothing gets you laid quicker than the HP-12C. Especially the platinum edition.
^word
Seriously dude, how do you make up this stuff? When I was working in investments everyone had a 12-c on their desk. I even worked at a few companies where they gave them to you for free.
Walk around a trading floor or a bond department and see if your theory holds. Oh I forgot you have never worked a day in investments in your entire life.
Bump.
S2000–what’s your take on this? Which one do you use? When people ask you which one, what do you tell them? Do you tell students something different than you tell professionals?
I use a 12c about 10x more per day than excel. It’s far more efficient for doing back of the envelope calcs when evaluating new investments. Not sure about other asset classes, but in mine there are only a handful of metrics you need to calculate when deciding if an investment is worth spending due diligence time on. 12 c is far more efficient for this. And you can rough out an IRR in your head or on your 12c so excel is pretty useless until you do a full underwriting.
Just means you haven’t yet built a Excel template to easily evaluate new securities (perferably automatically feeding from somewhere). But yea, I see your point
+1
I’m the only person I know of in my age group that uses the 12C but I do use it all the time. In fact I just used it 5 mins ago to crunch some numbers for my dad.
And the learning curve isn’t exactly steep. A few hours and you should be fine; it’s pretty intuitive after all. The only problem now is that I have difficulty using Algebraic calculators…I always punch keys in the wrong order
I use an HP 12-C.
(If you infer anything from that, you’re probably wrong.)
Years ago I taught a class in cash flow analysis (first class for CFP aspirants). The textbook I used – written by one of the faculty at the university where I was teaching – was good in many ways (it covered a lot of topics that you cannot find together in any other single textbook), and awful in many ways (lots of bizarre mistakes, which remained in the next edition even after I discussed them with the author). The book was written around the HP 12-C: all of the examples used that calculator. So, I bought it to be able to teach the class.
When people ask me which calculator they should use, I ask them if they already have a calculator. If so, I tell them to use that one, whatever it is. If not, I suggest the TI, as I prefer algebraic notation to RPN, and I think more people are accustomed to algebraic notation.
In point of fact, I see little difference in efficiency or ease of use between the two.
One of these days I need to buy a TI just so that when I get questions like this one:
http://www.analystforum.com/forums/cfa-forums/cfa-level-i-forum/91325072
I can tell them exactly which button has the natural logarithm function.