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TI Launches Three New Graphing Calculators

Posted by michael on from the if-you-can't-make-it-good,-make-it-pretty dept.

confusedneutrino writes "Texas Instruments has announced 3 new graphing calculators to be available later this year. The TI-84 Plus and TI-84 Plus Silver Edition will be available this spring and are essentially the TI-83 Plus/SE, respectively, in a new case and with USB support. (The TI-84 Plus does sport a 15 MHz processor, compared to the TI-83 Plus' 6 MHz, though.) The TI-89 Titanium will be available in the summer and features 3x the available ROM of the 'old' TI-89 and will also have USB capability. Looks to me like a Voyage 200 minus QWERTY. I personally don't feel an inclination to upgrade at all..."

1 of 373 comments (clear)

  1. Common comparisons to HP not necessarily valid by klipsch_gmx · · Score: 5, Informative
    Many people will probably claim that HP makes better calculators that support RPN, support more features, and so on. But, unless you're a mathematician, an electrical engineer or scientist who writes modeling software, there are few occupations that require the level of math of college level classes.

    And there are many occasions where the graphing functions of my TI have proved useful in the workplace. To name a few:

    - being able to view every key I've entered before evaluating the expression

    - being able to revise and edit incorrect expressions

    - to determine linear regression fits for data sets

    - to perform functions like logarithms and square roots on said data sets, in order to linearize them (linearity being checked, of course, by the R^2 correlation of my fit)

    - anything at all to do with linear algebra, especially solving systems of equations or matrix manipulations. RREF is a bitch by hand.

    For more "pure" math (like Diff. Eq.), I agree that pencil and paper are generally easier. But any applied math (a.k.a. engineering) requires an insane amount of busy work that could not be handled with a puny scientific calculator. I know you said Engineering and Physics are different stories, but everything I just wrote could certainly apply to all sciences (even the "soft" ones like Psych. and Sociology), or anything at all requiring data collection.

    For the record, I use a TI-86 daily at a bio-tech job. It has the stats capabilities of the 83, plus all the good parts of the 85.