CASIO fx-991EX -vs- TI-36X Pro -vs- SHARP EL-W516X Comparison -- i to a power -- CASIO wins

Round 4 in a 5-round comparison of 3 popular scientific calculators, here we look at how the calculators handle finding i (imaginary) raised to a power.

Casio is the undisputed winner here because of how it allows you to take i to "any" power (not sure how high it will actually go). The TI and Sharp will encourage you to learn your multiples of 4 (or figure out how modular arithmetic works).

[gvi]

I will never understand why the 991 does not have a primary pi button

[killaken]

on the TI* the power of i can't be higher than 3. but you can multiply to get to the desired power so i^7 = i^3 * i^2 * i^2 and it will produce the correct answer

further you can use the MATH catalog in the TI to do a mod on the exponent

such as i^7 = i^mod(7, 4)

you also don't need to calculate the mod before hand because the MATH catalog functions can be used in the exponent. so this input is fine exactly as written i^mod(7, 4)

then it will work for any power

*edit: I said casio by accident before

[Crazytesseract]

One could also use: i^4 = i^3* i.
For i^n, there is a simple trick: divide n by 4 and get the remainder (0, 1, 2 or 3).
i^ n = i^ (n mod 4).
so i^15 = i^3 = -1.