Sharp EL-531VB Scientific Calculator

Pros: Inexpensive and accurate with direct algebraic logic.
Cons: Separate cover can be easily lost, operations manual is sketchy, display not backlighted.

How things have changed over the years! As a graduate student in the 1970s, I purchased a handheld calculator with an accumulating memory and square root key for my statistics courses. That calculator set me back about $80. Today, such a calculator can be ...

Pros: Good numeral graphics; easy touch; quick response; ACCURACY.
Cons: Will it last the year? Present one has.... has....

Hubby has many hobbies, and he is more than college educated. He is self-taught in many things (reads Russian!) including celestial navigation. He never liked math; but, since many hobbies require math, again, it is self-taught. A simple calculator...

Pros: Versatile, cheap to buy
Cons: Soft keypad and UNACCEPTABLE alt-function label mess

For anyone who needs to use the alternate functions of this or its sibling designs, the nearly illegible alt labels on this calc will be a continuing irritant. Sharp has come out with newer versions having black case and good contrasty keypad graphics that make the newer machines greatly superior tools even if they are otherwise identical. If you use a calculator as a tool rather than a fashion fob, do not put up with the sort of artsy idiocy Sharp and other makers tried to fob on the public with this machine and others (e.g. the equally idiotic TI-84 Silver from Texas Instruments and, incredibly, their very recent and otherwise superb TI-89 Titanium.)