I started with RPN in 1972 with my HP 35. I still have the HP 35, but it
needs some repair. I use an HP15C for daily work now. As Olin pointed out,
with RPN, you evaluate the expression as you would by hand. You start
inside the innermost parenthesis and work your way out. You see all the
intermediate results as you go along. I teach electronics at a community
college at night. Most students have algebraic calculators and are forever
messing up by leaving out parenthesis and getting the wrong order of
operations. A fair number of algebraic calculators use RPN for certain
functions, such as square root. On many of these (especially those without
an alphanumeric display that shows the entire expression), you put in the
number, then hit square root, just like RPN. This inconsistency further
confuses students.

So... I'm much more comfortable with RPN. I migrated directly to it from a
slide rule, which operated the same way (work from inner parenthesis out).

Harold

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