HP to be dropped from Dow Jones industrial average



#2

... according to this Wall Street Journal article.


#3

HP needs to sell more calculators.


#4

Or at least engage in fewer $10B boondoggles.


#5

Past is past. I do believe the new leadership is working. The Premium (among many other products) is an indication of a new way of thinking; it will likely produce a wave of future HP customers just like many of us who fondly remember the impact of the early HP calculators years ago.

And whether HP is in the prior index or not makes no difference; investors invest on growth and cash flow and not on an arbitrary index or exchange. I have never heard of a price premium simply because the stock is a Dow component.

Ultimately HP's quality, innovation, and excellent customer support will carry the day. To me the Premium looks like one fantastic way of showing off the new HP.

[ edit: I mean the Prime ]


Edited: 12 Sept 2013, 12:37 a.m. after one or more responses were posted


#6

Quote:
The Premium (among many other products) is an indication of a new way of thinking ... To me the Premium looks like one fantastic way of showing off the new HP.

And just what is the "Premium"? It's not discussed in the cited article.


#7

I'm thinking he meant the "Prime". :-)


#8

HP Prime, of course. This is what happens when I work too long days.

#9

Quote:
The [Prime] (among many other products) is an indication of a new way of thinking;
Do what others have successfully done before is not exactly new for HP. It remains to see if this will not be a half-hearted project like others (e.g., tablets).

#10

Thomas,

That is always a possibility. HP is after all a business and the product demand must be high enough to sustain the costs. However, the Prime has a lot of innovation in it as well as being attractive to science and business. The teacher function override is outstanding; what I don't understand is why the school community is so adverse to CAS, etc. And if someone at HP would translate their own calculator program for the Black-Scholes formula in finance into the Prime environment I see a lot of demand. If the sensor input is developed further with new sensors - that could be attractive to the medical community especially in developing countries. I see millions of possibilities in the future of the Prime ... and man would I love to turn the Prime into a pocket oscilloscope ... or a Geiger counter ...

Chris


#11

Quote:
what I don't understand is why the school community is so adverse to CAS

Because we want our math students to THINK. I teach middle school math, and I want my students to be able to simplify fractions, for example. I don't want the calculator to do it for them. They get a better understanding of, and appreciation of, math if they learn to do it themselves. In fact, I don't let my students use calculators at all in my classroom. I know a lot of teachers do. Many HAVE TO because the state education department says they must (hmm, one must wonder about kickbacks from TI to the education "deciders").

I teach at a private boarding school for at-risk boys, and the headmaster told me to make sure the boys know the basics; he would rather they know how to do the four basic math operations than know how to simplify 3a^5 x 2a^4 / 2a^-4 (yes, I realize these are taught at different levels).

After using TI calculators in the classroom for a few years, I have decided that they don't do the boys any good. Now we teach THINKING.


#12

Don,

I greatly appreciate the good work you are doing. And I agree with your goal. This is even an old discussion. I remember my old physics teacher the late Phillip Morrison who touched upon the value of understanding the theoretical fundamentals and how to progress from there. The late physicist Richard Feynman touched upon that also in one of his many books where he compared two great east coast schools - one cramming stuff down your throat (my words) versus a play in the physics lab basement. Thus are we educating our kids to become highly trained industrial workers or science thinkers? From my own experience those spiral books from the HP calculators allowed me to play - and did they get me started in many directions! As a consequence it is my opinion that they do need to do math manually as you indicate, but in real life who solves differential equations manually anymore? Who has the time to add up areas over and under the curve to get to the probability. They really need both. And the HP Prime allows that - and I love it for that reason also. On the Prime the students can play in real time and see graphically how tangents work and perhaps even do their own little programs to solve equations using the Newton Tangential Method. Obviously, and outside the scope of this Museum blog, teachers like you today are facing tough times due to pressures from industry groups, as well as political and even religious views. I don't envy you and I highly respect you and you colleagues working in an often hostile environment.

Chris


#13

Hi Chris,

Quote:
one cramming stuff down your throat (my words) versus a play in the physics lab basement

A few years ago, I ran across and article (can't remember where I saw it) about why engineers today may not have the hands-on experience that they had in years previous. They showed two photos side-by-side of the MIT mechanical engineering lab -

The first was from the 30-40's and showed students doing hands-on with metals, materials, machines, etc.

The second was from a current period showing the students sitting in a computer lab simulating the materials.

The article covered the fact that a student which bends (stresses) the materials until it fails gets a better understanding of what exactly happens as opposed to just seeing it on a computer screen. It was a very interesting article and I wish I could remember where I saw it. I'd like to read it again.

But it goes back to your "playing in the lab".

Bill


#14

Hi Bill (msg. #12)

You hit it right on the nail!

Chris

#15

Thanks Chris.

Actually, my teaching environment is about as good as it gets; no pressure from anywhere! During my working career, I noticed that, generally, there is a direct relationship between salary and pressure. I'm a volunteer teacher, so with salary = 0, pressure also = 0 (well, maybe not 0, but close to it). My curriculum is "you've been working all your life, teach the kids what they need to know." You'll never find that in the public schools.

I would agree that at the high school level, there are probably some kids who would benefit from playing around with calculators and discovering things. But my middle school kids aren't there yet, and calculators are a distraction. So we try to make sure everyone knows the basics and the bright kids are challenged. It's a great way to do retirement.

Don


#16

Don (msg. #14),

My hat off to you. People like you are rare! Obviously, the psychological chronological learning age is a huge factor in the course sequencing. You are doing it right. What a way to pass on your lifetime of experiences. Those kids are lucky! I don't know if you are familiar with the "visual cliff" experiment in psychology where babies are placed upon a clear glass surface over a (safe) stair well. All of the sudden with age they get scared.

Thanks.

Chris

#17

Quote:
what I don't understand is why the school community is so adverse to CAS, etc.

I teach, and my own personal take on CAS is that there is nothing wrong with using them. There is also nothing wrong with teaching students how to use them. However, teaching mathematics and teaching how to use software to do mathematics are two very different endeavors.


#18

Han,

I agree. And I see nothing wrong with integrating disciplines.

Thanks.

Chris


#19

Quote:
Han,

I agree. And I see nothing wrong with integrating disciplines.

Thanks.

Chris


Nothing wrong with integrating them -- but it boils down to logistics. In Florida, we teach calculus 1 (basically, derivatives and their applications) in one academic year at the high school level. Likewise for calculus 2 (integration). One academic year is about 35+ weeks of class, and class meets daily for about 1 hour. This was the case when I went through the public school system. In college, what was once an academic year's worth of material is condensed into a single semester (about 15 weeks, and a 3-credit hour course meets 3 times a week, 1 hour per meeting; at some universities calculus 1 is 4 credits). So at the college level, there students are supposedly taught the same amount of material within a lesser amount of time. If we then integrate the use of software (or anything else), that means even less time spent on teaching the actual material because now they also have to learn how to use software.


#20

Thanks Han (msg. # 18),

Your analysis is as good as any if not better. It seems to me that for funding reasons, school board reasons, and other reasons as well, we are stuffing everything including the kitchen sink down their throats. Huge expensive books, politically corrected and so on, and lack of awareness of what really results from that is the order of the day.

No wonder high school kids can't even add sales tax at the local store.

Thus, I do see your point, I agree, and how do we give our kids time to play and absorb the connection between actual data and theoretical derivations?

Give them a Prime and start playing around! It worked for me in them days ... my beloved HP 25 is sitting on my desk. The buck started there ...

Thanks from Chris.

#21

Quote:
or a Geiger counter ...

There might be cheaper solutions.

Cheers

Thomas


#22

Thomas,

Thanks for the link. I assume you already have the Prime and all we need is a small sensor, on-line about $ 200 (like your link and elsewhere), but plugged in to the graph. I think many people underestimate the beneficial form factor and the Prime's entry into science labs. Ultimately, how many science students would be without the Prime and how many serious finance students would go through school without it. I postulate not that many would be without once the users begin to write programs.

Chris


#23

Guys, I think I am now giving responses in a wrong order. I'll try to sort it out. Too many at the same time.

Chris


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