Top 5 Calculators That Outlived Their Owners' Math Classes
The button-covered bricks people kept long after their last exam and still won't throw away.
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TI-83 Plus — Texas Instruments
It taught a whole generation to program by sneaking Drug Wars and Snake onto it during class, which is more than the algebra ever did.
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HP-12C — Hewlett-Packard
It has been sold since 1981 and finance people still guard theirs like a family heirloom, RPN entry and all.
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TI-89 Titanium — Texas Instruments
It solved symbolic calculus so well that some exams banned it, which is the best review a calculator can get.
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fx-991EX ClassWiz — Casio
Cheap, solar-powered, allowed in exams, and it quietly does spreadsheets and matrices that its pricier rivals charge triple for.
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HP-15C — Hewlett-Packard
Engineers loved its horizontal layout and solid buttons so much that HP brought it back decades later just to make them happy.