Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Interesting factoid from last week's Newsweek that just showed up in Lindon

The Texas Instruments TI-2500 calculator did only the four basic arithmetic functions. What was its original price in 1972?

a) $75.50
b) $99.95
c) $149.95
d) $199.99

And my own follow-up question: What in the heck (I live in Utah now) did people do before calculators? Math?!

5 comments:

Richard said...

I'm guessing "D", $199

Emily said...

The answer is c. What is that in today's dollars, Rich? Can you figure it out for me? Without using a calculator??

Richard said...

Ignoring Moore's Law and assuming a 3% inflation rate, $149.95 would be equal to $421.94 today.

Here's the equation:

Present Value x (1+interest rate)^number of periods = Future Value

$149.95 x 1.03^35 = $421.94

And no, I would not want to do that without a calculator.

Richard said...

Nor would I want to do it with only a 4 function calculator (that raised to the 35th power part would get real old)

austinmcraig said...

I love our family.