TI Launches Three New Graphing Calculators

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..."

Comments

Plus? Plus Silver Edition? Plus/SE? Titanium?

[utexaspunk]

Who's their marketing department? AOL?

Re:Plus? Plus Silver Edition? Plus/SE? Titanium?

[KillerHamster]

The All-New TI-89: Now 5 times faster than regular calculators!

Re:Plus? Plus Silver Edition? Plus/SE? Titanium?

[macrom]

Sounds more like Apple's original monikers for the various Macintosh models to me.

Re:Plus? Plus Silver Edition? Plus/SE? Titanium?

[donnyspi]

At least it wasn't TI-89 XP

Re:Plus? Plus Silver Edition? Plus/SE? Titanium?

[UnixRevolution]

Not AOL...

Macintosh Plus. Macintosh SE. Titanium Powerbook.

I think it's Apple's marketing dept.

Cool stuff!

[locknloll]

Reminds me of the days when I still had to calculate stuff with my crappy Casio & draw the graph by hand because graphing calculators weren't allowed in our school... ah, lost youth!

Re:Cool stuff!

[mbowles]

Which reminds me of the days when I had to calculate stuff with with my slide rule and draw the graph by hand. Of course this will probably remind someone of when they had calculate on their fingers and draw on papyrus. Gotta love technology progress.

Re:Cool stuff!

[locknloll]

of course I love technology progress - I just guess I was born a little too late for the Papyrus stuff ;)

TI-92

[BJZQ8]

I still love my TI-92...While in college waiting for teachers to show up, I played lots of Tetris games on Fargo, which was the assembly-language system made possible only because of a buffer underrun...

Re:TI-92

[jargoone]

Buffer underrun? Your TI-92 had a CD burner?

Re:TI-92

[VelvetHelmet]

I still use mine 4 years after graduation. I just hate using standard calculators now. The size of it gets all kinds of comments when I bring it to meetings. People think it is some kind of pda.

Re:TI-92

[jandrese]

I still love my venerable TI-85. I've still got my homemade link cable (although I havn't used it in ages) and the old DOS program you need to use it. I've got zTetris and Arkanoid through Zshell (a old exploit of a hardware bug that allowed you to run assembly). I still remember when the 32k of built in memory was considered large. My favorite feature is how the calculator just _sips_ power. A set of 4 AAAs last many months in this calculator. The only thing I don't like is the Fahrenheit->Celcius (and Celcius->Fahrenheit) conversion is buggy (it gets any temperature conversion below 0C completely wrong).

Re:TI-92

[BJZQ8]

Okay....OVERrun...or overflow, whatever you want to call it. The TI-92 allowed you to transfer data between machines, and make and restore backups. But normally this was limited to the "user" area of the calculator. By crafting some extra long strings, a buffer in the calc would overflow, and fill the normally-un-accessable "OS" area, resulting in the ability to run all sorts of assembly applications.

Re:TI-92

[jargoone]

That's really neat! So basically, one could exploit that, and make the system execute code that it was not intended to? Scary. Good thing that can't happen in other systems!

Re:TI-92

[BJZQ8]

I know you're being sarcastic, but it is interesting for one reason....IT IS HAPPENING ON A GRAPHING CALCULATOR. I am well aware of the swarms of buffer overflow exploits out there...but again, this was on a graphing calculator, and was put to good use, not DOS'ing SCO.

Re:TI-92

[jandrese]

Huh? On the -85 you don't have to stick them in parenthesis because it's a single number. It works fine for above-freezing conversions too, but the calculation is just wrong for below-freezing calculations. I think it's a rom bug (although it's been so long that I forget which rom version I have).

Re:TI-92

[SomeGuyFromCA]

> On the -85 you don't have to stick them in parenthesis because it's a single number.

Yes you do. The precedence is wonky; it treats -xC -> F as -(xC -> F). The fix is to specify (-x)C -> F.

Re:TI-92

[Electrum]

through Zshell (a old exploit of a hardware bug that allowed you to run assembly)

It wasn't a hardware bug, and in fact, wasn't a bug at all. An entry in the custom menu contains a pointer to a memory location, which gets executed when the entry is selected. The menu entry for ZShell (or whatever shell) gets setup using a hacked backup file.

This is the document that started it all:

http://www.ticalc.org/pub/text/calcinfo/85hack.txt

Re:TI-92

[Ciel]

:: ...but again, this was on a graphing calculator, and was put to good use, not DOSing SCO. ::


I'm afraid that I don't follow you...

Re:TI-92

[sketerpot]

DoSing SCO, while satisfying (especially since it showed their security to be so poor that many people thought SCO was faking it---their security couldn't be that bad, could it? It could.), ultimately made us all look like immature k1|)|)13z. It accomplished more harm than good, although I'm not exactly going to denounce the people who did it, if you get my drift.

Common comparisons to HP not necessarily valid

[klipsch_gmx]

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.

Re:Common comparisons to HP not necessarily valid

[John Courtland]

Both the TI-92 and the TI-89 have symbolic manipulation. Completely invaluable for performing integration and differentiation quickly, especially with trancendentals like pi, e, sqrt(2), etc.

Re:Common comparisons to HP not necessarily valid

[RadioheadKid]

I'm an electrical engineer, and I've been using my TI-85 for over ten years now. I think it's just a matter of personal preference. The RPN users were definetly in the minority in all my engineering, math and science classes, if there were any at all.

Re:Common comparisons to HP not necessarily valid

[part15guy]

I cannot use any calculator besides my HP48G (aka secret weapon) any more. If I have to balance my checkbook and do not have secret weapon with me, then I do it by hand. No TI calculator will work for me.

Re:Common comparisons to HP not necessarily valid

[harrkev]

This does not say much...

First, it can be safely assumed that almost ALL people who use RPN also know how to use old "algebraic" calculators. Yet they still use RPN.

I do not know of ANYBODY who became proficient with RPN who prefers algebraic calculators.

The reason that RPN is dying is because HP was the only company making RPN calculators, and they are not very competetive now. You have a shelf full of calcuators, and the shiny TI machines are brand new, and at a good price. The HP one (if they have one) may have been sitting there for a while, and simply cannot compete on such things as screen resolution and memory.

Re:Common comparisons to HP not necessarily valid

[Oscaro]

It is more intuitive because it is the way the brain works. Mine, at least. When I evaluate expressions I do it stack-based.

Re:Common comparisons to HP not necessarily valid

[dslbrian]

You have a shelf full of calcuators, and the shiny TI machines are brand new, and at a good price. The HP one (if they have one) may have been sitting there for a while, and simply cannot compete on such things as screen resolution and memory.

I've been using my HP 48SX since '93 or so. Back then it cost something like $300. Its an amazing calculator, a lot like having Matlab and a symbolic solver in the palm of your hand, but as the years go by I kept thinking that one day its going to break and I won't be able to find another RPN calc that can do what it does.

So on a trip through Frys one day a couple years back, I spotted a HP 48GX on the shelf, and due to the desperate thought of having the SX die one day I went ahead and bought it as a backup. Even though it still cost a fortune, HP hasn't done anything to the design. Its the exact same calculator I could have gotten 10 years ago.

At least now HP finally has an upgrade - selling the 49G+ - with a 75MHz ARM, USB connectivity, and more memory.

Re:Common comparisons to HP not necessarily valid

[bfields]

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.

This is a digression, but I want to make sure we're not underestimating the value of a college math class or two. As someone who's spent some time teaching college freshmen, I've noticed that most high-school graduates have only a very tenuous grasp of things like what a function really is, how sines, cosines, and logarithms really work, and a lot of other stuff that we tend to think of as high school mathematics these days but that (for whatever reason) most people don't really "get" till after they've had a calculus course or two.

I also tend to think that an "educated person" should have a basic idea of what it means to prove something mathematically. And that any responsible citizen in a democracy needs a basic grasp of statistics.

So while few people need a lot of differential equations and whatnot for their daily work, there's still a place for a certain amount of college mathematics.

--Bruce Fields

Re:Common comparisons to HP not necessarily valid

[Quino]

I'm one of those people who fell in love with RPN when it came out.

I worked for an entire summer to help pay for grad school, and the only "treat" I spent money on was an HP48 (G I think), did symbolic calculus -- all that insanely kewl stuff. I remember it was an expensive toy, but I was really happy with it.

Until I dropped it, fell from my desk onto a carpeted floor and never worked again. :(

I was actually pretty disappointed -- I know it's fancy electronics but it's also a damn expensive hand-held electronic calculator. It should be able to withstand a fall from a desk, IMHO.

For the two or three years before the "incident", I was pleased as punch - and I will vouch for the RPN notation as being the way to go.

Re:Common comparisons to HP not necessarily valid

[Paracelcus]

I really like my TI-82!

However, I like my Faber Castell Mannheim Duplex slipstick much better!

Re:Common comparisons to HP not necessarily valid

[babbage]

I've been using my HP 48SX since '93 or so. Back then it cost something like $300. Its an amazing calculator, a lot like having Matlab and a symbolic solver in the palm of your hand, but as the years go by I kept thinking that one day its going to break and I won't be able to find another RPN calc that can do what it does.

If you have a modern-ish Palm PDA -- one that runs PalmOS 5 or newer -- you may want to give Power48 a try:

Power48 is a PalmOS based emulator for the Hewlett-Packard 48SX, 48GX and 49G series of calculators. It provides a fairly complete emulation of the Saturn CPU upon which these calculators are based and is able to run a majority of the programs available for them. It emulates one instance each of the 48SX, 48GX and 49G, and maintains complete and separate state information for each allowing the user to quickly switch between them.

Power48 is GPLed, and distributed with the HP calculator ROM files. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the ROMs are freely redistributable, but the site just says you have to have permission to use them and that they remain the property of HP. I'm not sure what the status of that is, but in any case the emulator is fully in the clear, and runs nicely on modern Palm & Sony (et al?) PalmOS devices running at least PalmOS4 (preferably, PalmOS5 -- not sure what the status of the new PalmOS6 is, but then I'm not sure anything on the market even runs PalmOS6 yet...).

In any case, some people like the nice clicky-clicky feel of an old school calculator, and that's understandable. If you don't mind tapping a glass screen though it's nice being able to have the functionality of one (or three!) of the old HP calculators in the same device that can also be your mp3 player, Tetris console, digital camera (on some models), and oh yeah Palm Pilot, too.

Not only that, but I suspect that a modern Palm PDA is also going to be faster than an old HP calculator would have been. It's a nice alternative to having to buy a new calculator...

Texas Instruments: the proud sponsors of SkyNet

[revery]

The TI-84 Plus, the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition, the TI-83 Plus/SE, the TI-89 Titanium, this is all too confusing. Just tell me hich one of these looks like Kristanna Loken, and where can I pick one up.

I need to do me some computin' on a beautiful calculator bent on the complete destruction of mankind. And I want USB support, too, dang it!

--

Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.

TI Linux

[Seth Finklestein]

I'll happily buy one or both of these calculators for my school-age children, provided that they can run TI Linux. Frankly, I have grown weary of the proprietary, closed-source interfaces that plague graphing calculators. They're essentially small computers; can't they run a real OS?

Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Linux on Calculators Expert

Re:TI Linux

[hobbesmaster]

And they have USB. You know what that means? Wifi and lynx in the middle of math class. Oh yeah!

Re:TI Linux

[connorbd]

I will bite at your hook.

I don't know the name of the project, but someone is actually developing an open-source firmware package for the TI-89/92/V200 series to get around certain coding limitations in the standard OS. TICalc.org should have info, and I believe it was on Slashdot a few weeks ago.

Why not a PDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not a PDA that runs graphing calculator software instead?

Re:Why not a PDA?

[WTFmonkey]

TEachers won't dig that. It was hard enough to get teachers to accept graphing calculators at all, let alone something that teachers will see as a full-fledged computer.

Of course, all it means is that the teachers have to give tests that prove you know HOW to do something with formulae, not just that you can memorize them. I always hated that "Memorize the first four pages of your integral table book" shit. If it's a common integral, you remember it. If it's not, well, that's why they wrote the book. Personally, I think all this technology in the classroom is great.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[Slack3r78]

I posted on this the last time the issue of graphing calculators came up - namely when HP announced their new line. The biggest reason being that the graphing calculator interface on a PDA will suck compared to the Real Deal (TM). Having to dig through 8 layers of menus to find the function you want simply doesn't cut it when you just want to get work done. This is the reason why despite owning a top of line line desktop and a fairly decent laptop, I'll still be purchasing an HP-49G+ in the near future - either of the computers has much more power, in the case of the laptop is portable, and could run graphing calculator software, but they still wouldn't be the best tool for getting work done. I'll stick to a nice, standalone calculator and skip the all-in-one super thingamajig, thank you.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[RevAaron]

I use a PDA for math. I started doing so using my Newton and the LittleLisp interpreter, with a bunch of functions I coded myself and some I converted from various Scheme sources. That was fine for the intro to stats class I was taking at the time, but in later classes (mathematical ecology [mmmmm], calculus), I needed something more.

When I am using a Linux PDA, I use GNU Octave, a good Matlab clone. When I'm using WinCE, I use GNU Maxima. At first, I preferred using Octave, since I had used Matlab more, but it's a pain in the ass to use the existing Zaurus distro of Octave. No line editing, no GUI, not even a cheap interpreter front-end. On the otherhand, on WinCE, I have full-out XMaxima, with gnuplotting into the canvas. A really sweet setup. Beats any of the math apps specifically for PDAs that I've seen in functionality, but has been developed enough that it works well on a PDA.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[connorbd]

Try EasyCalc... very close to the real thing. The only thing it's missing is scriptability, and since it's GPL someone could add that.

Truth be told, some teachers like the freedom to nuke their students' calculators before tests so they can't, you know, stash answers in there. Frankly, if PDAs were allowed and teachers followed that protocol, nastiness would ensue from parents, and rightly so. Truth be told, an ARM-based PDA such as a Palm Tungsten or WinCE unit would so utterly blow away a graphing calculator that, properly implemented, it'd be not unlike sending your kid to school with a copy of Matlab. Most teachers of anything up to college-level calculus II would not appreciate that.

I do agree with your logic -- makes sense, right tool for the right job, and graphing calcs and PDAs have both evolved far enough away from their early-80s pocket computer roots that they occupy distinctly different domains. But the reason PDAs aren't allowed is strictly a functional issue.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[RevAaron]

The only thing missing from EasyCalc compared to a powerful calculator is scripting? Pfft! Some people do more with their TIs or HPs than just graphing and arithmatic.

EasyCalc is missing a ton of stuff compared to a real calculator, or even a good math app that can run on a desktop or PDA. Symbolic math is a start. Matrices. Solving. Calculus.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[RevAaron]

Hell, you can use a TI or HP emulator on your PDA if you are so concerned about menus. All the same, I've used some very good math apps on PDAs that have no menus, let alone 8 layers.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[RevAaron]

I use my PDA as my mathematic tool as well as for taking all of my notes in class, upper division math and biology courses mostly. I've not had a problem using a PDA on a test since I started trying. Granted, I usually discuss it with the prof first, rather than just whip it out and hope they don't notice. For a couple of profs, I've had to give them my memory card so that I don't have my class notes with me, though there is no reason I couldn't just as easily have them internally and usually do. Makes some profs feel better, I suppose. Though doing so would be incredibly easy, I've never cheated that way, even when it would've really helped. It can be very helpful to have a lisp interpreter for math problems, though. Perhaps an unfair advantage. :)

High school teachers... that's another thing. I had a teacher once that didn't let me use a Shaft soundtrack 8-track casette for goodluck. It's been a handful of years since I was in HS, but kids weren't allowed to use a TI-92, although you could just as well enter notes on an 81. 92 does symbolic math and the like, though.

I've never seen an integral book myself, never used a table.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[Txiasaeia]

HP all the way. I still have problems with Calc in windows... I want to hit + or - before I enter a number which inevitably isn't a good thing. I can still "feel" the feedback of an HP-42G... wish mine wasn't stolen... sigh...

Re:Why not a PDA?

[connorbd]

Point being, it's open source... it can be fixed. Why it hasn't yet is an interesting question...

Re:Why not a PDA?

[eean]

Dude, the point is on a graphing calculator you have a few dozen buttons that allow you to access whatever function you want quickly.

I wouldn't mind a special keyboard for Mathematica. Of course the problem is that I still couldn't really use it because I can use a TI-89 on a test often, but usually not Mathematica.

The other problem is that Mathematica is like the worst in closed-source software. From what I've heard, the Mathematica license easily costs my university more then the Microsoft one (and outside of our Math and CS dept, we have a very MS-oriented campus.) Maxima is a good open source alternative to Mathematica, but it isn't yet at the same level.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[GoofyBoy]

>the point is on a graphing calculator you have a few dozen buttons that allow you to access whatever function you want quickly.

Is this enough buttons for you?
http://web.jet.es/leobueno/imagenes_del_emul ador_e mu48.htm

Re:Why not a PDA?

[Slack3r78]

And that all has to fit on a screen that's what? 3"x4" on the generous side? I'll stick to full size buttons with actual, tactile feedback. The problem isn't having the buttons per se, it's *how* it's all laid out.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[RevAaron]

GNU Octave is open source. Why doesn't it run on PalmOS? Most of any random Linux distro is open source, why hasn't it taken over Windows?

Being open source doesn't mean these problem disappear. EasyCalc isn't meant to be an all-in-one math app, near as I can tell, but do a few things pretty well. PalmOS is a pain to code for, so perhaps that and the restrictions placed on POS apps are the reason.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[eean]

Suppose I should have clarified. Keyboard buttons. The kind you push. With your finger. Keyboards are always going to be more efficient then mouses, though sometimes they require more memorization. This is not the case with the specialized keypads they have on graphing calculator.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[eean]

Now that I look more closely at the screenshots, suppose I say should say keyboards are more efficient then mouses or pens.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[irokitt]

I've seen a guy with a program that looked like derive on his Palm, plugging away during math class. It had pretty print and everythin, but it was a beta and tended to crash or do wierd things.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[tho 1234]

Depends on what work you do (i'm an engineering physics student)

Running maple for symbolic stuff and matlab for numeric calculations is significantly faster than a graphing calculator for any moderately complex problem- you don't need to mess around with menus or second function keys, and typing on a full size qwerty keyboard is much faster than messing around with tiny calculator keys. And not to mention the huge increase in processing power.

Any problem that is faster on a graphing calculator, is probably simple enough to solve even faster using pencil, paper, and a normal scientific calculator, assimung you know what you're doing. Cheap $20 scientific calculators are much faster to use (no menus at all) and decent ones can solve matricies, systems of equations, numeric integration, etc...

Many of the best engineers and math students i know use a similar combination, it seems that graphing calcs are more popluar among the CS and Comp eng students who don't do much serious math ...

But i do agree that a PDA would be useless for math, it has none of the advantages of a laptop, and all the disadvantages of a graphing calculator

Re:Why not a PDA?

[strike2867]

I used MatLab. Has great packages for most things. Statistics package, graphing package. These were the two I used the most. Much more powerful and faster then my 89. I was working with large images, decompressing them to thousands of pixels and then working on them. Took under a second to do something to every value of a 100x100 matrix. Better programing stuff also. Dont know about the algebra system on it, but you can use Maple for that anyway.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[connorbd]

I would suspect that GNU Octave is too tightly tied to a console, but I've never used it. I suspect it could be ported to PalmOS 5, but I wouldn't try it on the older models.

And I'm just saying that it could be done. EasyCalc already does seem to be the most feature-filled calculator program for the Palm as it is.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[mark-t]

Why not a PDA that runs graphing calculator software instead?

One word answer: Durability.

Calculators are sturdy, they can survive the bumps and jostles that happen in the field where you need to be handling PDA's with kid gloves unless you want be replacing the screen every 6 to 8 months.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[atomicdragon]

My high school teacher calculus teacher did not let us use any calculator. We moaned and complained, but in the end I got really quick with the math which still helps me today. The first test she gave was on finding the trig functions of a bunch of numbers, which required knowing angle addition formulas and such. Now days, I'll be half way through a problem while someone I am working with is still digging through a book or calculator to look up the trig identity in order to start the problem.

But I know that is not for every one since not everyone will need calculus. But I like the idea of not using calculators until the top level class, so that you learn the math first, then how to use the calculator (which is what the calculus teacher did, finally letting us use calculators towards the end of the second year). Otherwise you will get situations that I have seen before. For example I was grading some chemistry homework to find that some students hand wrote numbers exactly as "4e9" or "6e-10". I asked them why they didn't write it in normal scientific notation, they said that they didn't even know what it meant, only copying what came from the calculator (I can't say much for the teacher of that class anyways).

As far as PDA's, they are probably the way to go since I have Maple for a WinCE PDA (got free for something, I wouldn't have bought it on my own) which did way more than the TI-89 and even had a nice interface with buttons on half the screen making it quick to type stuff. But whenever I do math that can't be done on paper now, I am usually within 10 feet of a computer and will use that instead. If my P4 takes an hour to solve something, I doubt the PDA has the battery life to even try.

Re:Why not a PDA?

[stickb0y]

For occasional use to calculate sales tax or tips, a PDA is fine. For any extensive calculations, though, such as for math/science/engineering work, a physical calculator is far superior for the following reasons:

• Physical buttons. Never underestimate the importance of tactile feedback. When I push a button on my calculator, I want to be sure that:
  • I pushed the right button; on a PDA, it's easy to tap the wrong virtual button, especially if you're using your fingers
  • the button I pushed registered
  Without good feedback, you waste time looking at what you're pressing and looking at the display area to double-check yourself. With proper feedback, you can use a calculator without looking at it at all. Why do people prefer bulky physical keyboards to those flat, touchpad-like ones?
  
• Ease of use. With a PDA, you either need to take out the stylus or to dirty the screen with your finger. Plus, if you're writing out your calculations on paper, switching between a pencil/pen and the stylus can be tedious.
  
• Battery life. My physical calculator lasts for years before I need to even think about replacing the batteries. With a PDA, you need to keep it charged constantly.
  
• Durability. PDAs are fragile. Physical calculators are rugged. A physical calculator can be thrown into a knapsack and jostled around without any worries. Even if you do break something, the physical calculator is much cheaper to replace.
  
• Dependability. I have more trust in the results from TI and HP than in those from the various PDA software packages of less mature vendors.

I don't understand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloody hell, why must the urge to change the numbers of those calculators like that?

WHY CANNOT THE NEW ONE BE LIKE 94?

I don't want to remember that 83 is older than 86, but 83 plus silver-balls is never, and also faster.

I hate this. Same thing with everything. Hell, we couldn't stick to mhz, but we had to begin with 2200+ and so on.

At least those keep on incrementing.

Re:I don't understand.

[frodo from middle ea]

Oh yeah, try buying tera-flu.

They've got them in atleast 10 diff varieties, i swear.

• cold and cough
• flu and cough
• flu and sour throat
• cold and sour throat
• ....

Re:I don't understand.

[JimBobJoe]

but 83 plus silver-balls is [newer]

Hmm...just like my grandfather.

Well grandma is happy. They're like a cowbell.

Let me be the first to say...

[HardCase]

That they can have my HP 48GX when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. And even then, I'm not so sure...

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[mewton]

Ahhh, My 48GX was watch, daily organizer, portable game system, address book, and that's not even considering all the coursework it got me through. I wouldn't even think of buying a calculator that didn't use RPG notation.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Dielectric]

RPG notation? Cool. My GX only has RPN. I did have FPS (Doom) for a bit, but I found that the demons didn't really have a good handle on matrix transforms.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[i621148]

the hp48gx is the shiznat!!! except: http://www.ncees.org/exams/calculators/ i am really pissed about this. i have been studying for a whole year using my hp48gx and now i feel like it was like practicing for the olympics with the wrong size pole-vault. i mean, cmon, who is really buying an extended rf transmitter kit to beam messages back and forth to the other test participants!!! is this really that commonplace?

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[AKnightCowboy]

AMEN! My 48GX has been a friend to me, lo these past 9 years ... but so has the interest payment to Service Merchandise ...

College has been the best 9 years of my life so far and I owe it all to my HP 48GX.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[HardCase]

Lucky me, I took the EIT a year before they enforced the ban, but I guess I'll have to find an 11C or something like it before the PE next year!

-h-

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[juhaz]

This should be modded as Insightful, not funny...

48 GX is a truly amazing piece of hardware, and the fact that a second hand one still costs around $100 is a damn solid evidence of that - it's over ten years old! All the other devices that old have been dusting in garbage bins for years, but these just keeps going.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[simong_oz]

amen brother, amen. RPN forever!

WTF?

[tuxette]

It's the most powerful TI graphing handheld allowed for use on the AP* Calculus, AP Statistics, AP Physics, AP Chemistry, PSAT/NMSQT**, SAT(R) I , SAT II Math IC & IIC exams.

BEWARE! "Back in the old days" rant coming...

When I took those exams, we weren't allowed to use those fancy calculators. If we were even allowed to use calculators at all, we were only allowed to use the most basic scientific calculator you can find. No graphics, no programming, nada zip zero.

OK, rant over. I guess the old-fashioned kind of calculator is hard to find these days. But I'm quite curious now. Have the questions been adjusted to account for use of all these fancy calculators?

Re:WTF?

[crass751]

When I took the AP Calculus exam in 2000, there were large chunks of the exam where you couldn't use a caclulator. In the places that you could, you still had to show all work leading up to your solution.

Re:WTF?

[skiflyer]

Yes they have.
If I'm not mistaken there was a sweet spot of about two years when the calculators weren't technically allowed, but also weren't technically banned and the adjustments weren't complete.

Though this does raise the question of bias doesn't it, these calculators aren't cheap, and some students only are able to use them if their school provides them, which is clearly much different than having one at home to practice with/put notes into/etc.

Re:WTF?

[Grey Ninja]

Having taken my last calc class about a year ago, I will say that I don't know of any teachers who allow the usage of ANY calculators in their exams, even the most basic ones you can find. The single exception was in my OpenGL class, when the teacher allowed us any calculator, as long as it didn't have the year's notes stored in memory. ;-) That was when having a graphing calculator capable of calculating complex matrix operations came in VERY handy.

Re:WTF?

[Wakkow]

Nowadays the tests take that into consideration. The testmakers expect everyone to have a graphing calculator and design the test accordingly. You -could- get by with just a scientific calculator, but would be bogged down with a lot of busy work during the test.

... unless the test changed in the last 4 years (which it very well may have).

Re:WTF?

[hplasm]

Like discounts for cash in a store that accepts CCards, NOT using a calculator in an exam that allows them can pay dividends. For example, you can show workings, together with any basic assumptions - I did a whole maths paper like this once at college, sans calc, which let me set pi=3, and work to no decimal places- which was valid, as long as it was stated at the beginning. No problems, good pass mark.

Re:WTF?

[stevesliva]

Taking the AP exam costs $65 or $70... and financial assistance is available. Most schools these days also provide calculators if needed-- the clear solution is for the calculator to be a year-long loan.

Re:WTF?

[Ba3r]

I swear i was the only one who trudged through all the calc classes with only a scientific calculator... and I think i was the only one to get Cs in them all too! Thankfully by the time i started tiddling with group theory I had bypassed the number crunching phase of mathematics.

Re:WTF?

[WTFmonkey]

Nope. The best example I can think of is my linear algebra class about two years ago.

The teacher would allow any calculator you wanted, short of a laptop (I think the the TI-92+ was okay). So you had a calculator capable of doing any matrix manipulation you needed, but if you 1) couldn't figure out how to use the Gaussian Poo Function or 2) Couldn't figure out what the answer meant in the frame of the question, you were hosed.

This meant a lot more theoretical, no-calculating-type questions, as well as tougher questions that aren't simply "What is [some matrix] carried to the fourth power?" I think it's great since you don't spend your entire test time doing menial calculations.

Another type of question they'll ask do dodge the calculator bullet is, "Show the first five steps of this calculation," or "Show the intermediate result of this calculation." The point is that you can do grunt-math on the calc but still have to understand the processes.

Re:WTF?

[mritunjai]

old days ???

Dude, you're not allowed to use any programmable calculator even in post grad courses in IITs (Indian Institute of technology) even NOW... and nobody misses them.

As for problems involving them, we have something called "lab exercises" where usually a Solaris/Linux/WIndows box running MATLAB is at your disposal and you're supposed to solve some fairly "interesting" problems ;-)

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I teach AP Physics, and recently went to several workshops on how to teach the course and how to make sure your kids score well.

I make up the tests for my classes from the old AP tests. I have digital versions of all of the AP Physics tests, both B & C, going back to 1971 or so.

Newer tests are much more likely to give lots of numbers and ask for a numerical answer. Even then, the scoring is mostly based on how people arrive at the answer than it is on the answer itself. For a paticular sub-question, you might get five points for a correct answer. If you show your work, but plug the numbers into your calculator incorrectly, you might get 4 points.

There has been one huge change. The free-response portion of the AP Physics test now includes an equation sheet. This was added when the AP test designers realized that people were programming the equations into their calculators.

After they started letting calculators in, an interesting shift happened. I've noticed that a lot of the questions from the past few years don't require a calculator at all, but are purely algebraic.

This is ironic, because those goddamn calculators are destroying everyone's ability to do algebra. I get excellent math students at a solid high school, and they are incapable of manipulating or visualizing an equation without that little black box that half of them have surgically attached to their left palm. Pathetic.

Re:WTF?

[The Cydonian]

Have the questions been adjusted to account for use of all these fancy calculators?

One of the questions I got when I took Math IIC was this:-

sin x = cos x. x =?

To this day, I suspect ETS presumed test-takers would plot both graphs (ie, y = sin x, y = cos x) on their TI's, see where they intersect, and then search for at least one of the results to be one of the solutions.

Then again, I never had a high opinion of fellow test-takers especially in math and science; kinda tells you why I'm a regular here on /., I suppose.

Re:WTF?

[The Cydonian]

Yup, neither in the university I was in until a few days back. :-)

One of the biggest ironies in my college career was that I actually had to downgrade my "official" calc from a graphing to a "normal" scientific calculator for exams and in-class assignments even as the complexity of the problems I got kept on increasing.

Then again, you get all the practice you want with log tables right in JEE (that's the entrance exam for IIT's bachelors programme, for all you non-Indians) itself, so... :-D

(For the record, I HATED those log tables and still insist that calcs, even if only scientific, should be allowed in JEE's. That hasn't changed in all this years has it?)

Re:WTF?

[NegativeK]

Have the questions been adjusted to account for use of all these fancy calculators?

Absolutely. The test has been adjusted quite well for those calculators.. If you know how to use a TI-89, you can get at least a four. The questions seemed like they were designed for 89/92 gurus.. I'm a math major now, and I knew my stuff back then, but that test (AP Calculus BC) went a lot faster with the 89, and it was/is completely legitamite. Yeah, yeah, you have to show work, and half the test you can't use a calculator.. But it is nice to be able to do a Riemann sum with a calculator just to make sure you didn't screw up anywhere. ^.^

There's a reason people call "AP Calc" "AP Calculator."

Re:WTF?

[Bishop]

Dear god man! You can do this in your head. If you are having trouble, draw both functions on a scrap of paper.

x = pi/4 + n*pi

n is any integer.

Re:WTF?

[default luser]

This is not necessarily a good idea. Case in point:

In 1993 my junior high got a "great idea" ( read: they got a great deal from TI ), and loaned scientific calculators to every student.

However, these were TI's ugly blue colored scientific calculators with limited funtionality ( compared to your average $20 Casio those days ), and they had a solar cell that was VERY suscpetible to breaking (ie: drop it on the floor, it cracked ). Even with the plastic cover on, a book dropped on top could mean a cracked cell.

The worst part: in order to simplify return of the calculators at the end of the year, EVERY student had to take one. And the worst part was the replacement price was $30, quite a bit higher than the average scientific calculator you could buy in the store.

I ended up keeping it safe at home, so did a lot of people. As for the people who used them, many broke them more than once over the course of the year.

It's not a bad idea in concept, but bad execution could sour the deal.

Re:WTF?

[grgyle]

Oh yes! What a difference a few years makes!

I'm returning to school for a second BS (Electrical Engineering) after 15 years (I did Physics the first time through).

The curriculum, classes, and professor *assume* that you have full knowledge of the intracacies of a programmable calculator. Before, there would never be a chance of a heavy bookwork problem appearing on an exam (say, for example, requiring solving 3 simult equations) just because slogging through the handwriting would use up all of your exam time. Now, you can throw nasty matrices and integrals at your calculator...change units from miles-per-gallon to rods-per-hogshead at the touch of a button!

Differential equations? No prob, throw it at your calculator...

This is allowing tests and classes to get far more in depth in their material instead of getting hung up on simpler topics just because they take a long time to compute by hand... At my university, the only reason that laptops are discouraged in exams is a logistical one, because the real estate on the skimpy little classroom desks is too scant.

I'm also tutoring other calculus and physics students, graphing calculators were banned when I was in college, now they're required!

Re:WTF?

[Octorian]

Yeah, I've noticed that as well. In my college math classes, calculators were not allowed at all. However, the classes were designed so you really didn't need one anyways.

In other classes where you dealt with numbers, they were allowed. In fact, some classes even allowed a full-blown laptop with programs like Maple and Matlab.

The truth is that it really depends on what you're actually trying to get done in the class. If the goal of the class is learning the math, then no calculators. If the goal of the class is to learn how to apply the math to a bigger problem, then use calculators because it isn't the math itself they're testing you on.

Re:WTF?

[janeil]

The fact that any student of mathematics could look at that equation and not immediately know the solutions shows how completely useless these tools are for learning mathematics. Any of my peers, those of us who learned advanced mathematics in the years before calcs existed in any form can easily use these tools now. The reverse, that learning to use calcs can aid in easily learning mathematics, has clearly been shown to be a bust. Can any college prof out there who's been teaching since the 70's or 80's say that their students show GREATER aptitude in math since they've been allowed to use calculators? At all? Any improvements in their students' understanding at all? Ever since these tools came along the studies have consistently shown that students do no worse when allowed to use them in class and on tests. No worse. High praise, that.

Long aside: Don't get me wrong, these tools are great fun to use, and are indeed excellent for applications. That is, for approximate solutions for the day-to-day world of time and money, or even arbitrarily difficult mathematic calculations. But mathematics is about Proof, dear friends, not solutions.

I'll fess up here, I'm a high school math teacher of 25+ years in the classroom, and I have advanced algebra students who can not reduce 4/8. That is, they don't "see" 1/2 when they look at 4/8. Do you think they understand what 5.9% unemployment means at all? It could be 59%, or any other of those fine digits they see when they punch the buttons on their calculators. But for a lot of these kids, numbers and operations are just appropriate buttons to punch.

And don't get me started on those worthless games that can be played on the TI's, has anybody ever sat down in their room and played games on them? Of course not. Geez, just skip class if that's the best thing you can do with your time.

What should happen is that on seeing that equation your mind should see the unit circle and the line y=x intersecting it, done. Or just know it already from memory. Oh wait, I forgot, memorization is an outdated learning method. Too bad.

Re:WTF?

[Bishop]

Ha! It has been so long since I thought about sin/cos in terms of triangles and unit circles that I completely overlooked this easier solution.

Re:WTF?

[Bishop]

For the majority of students I agree that a calculator has no place in a high school (or below) math class. There are some students that are able to better learn with a calculator. I am thinking of the student who will never be able to see 4/8 = 1/2. With a claculator it is possible to show them some trig and similar basic math. These are very special cases though.

In the science class room I see the argument either way. On one side: more math practice is good. On the other side: the purpose is to teach science, sometimes the numbers get in the way.

In university a calculator is irrelevent. The purpose is to teach theory. The numbers are just window dressing. I wouldn't want to be in science without a good number cruncher though.

I am a HP48G user. It is a wonderfull calculator. In university it allowed me to do my job (think) without getting in the way. I don't recall ever seriously useing the higher symbolic functions. As far as I am concerned it is just an RPN calculator with a four line screen and a really deep stack.

Re:WTF?

[Nick_dm]

Yup, for my maths degree I'm allowed a calculator with +,-,*,/ and square root and %. It also has memory add, memory remove and memory recall. I guess I'll take it into exams just in case :) but I can't say I use it very often. I suspect it would be somewhat different for an applied course, but for maths its fairly useless.

Re:WTF?

[The Cydonian]

Precisely my point.

Actually, you don't even have to "do" anything on paper; always thought everyone who did Trig at Senior Secondary level should KNOW it already by the time they come to give the SAT's.

Re:WTF?

[The Cydonian]

It would take longer for the calculator to plot this than most high-schoolers can do it in their heads.

You got it. Which is why I suspect ETS gave the question in the first place, to tease folks who come along with TI-82's and so on.

voyage?

[Suppafly]

The voyage 2000 is just a newer ti92+ right? Those have always been the same as the ti89s plus a qwerty layout.

Re:voyage?

[Sp4rtikuz]

Indeed, the 89 is ALREADY a V200 without the qwerty (and less some ram), the new 89 is just flashier looking (read more ugly) with some extra brain space.

Anyways, for those who didn't catch the orginal /. article PedroM is a true OS for the TI-89 6800 based calc. Of course using it makes your 150 89 worthelss as an algebra kicker-asses, but that's never the point =).

Re:voyage?

[proj_2501]

errr, didn't the 89 come out AFTER the 92+?

*fondly remembers his TI99-4A*

What's the point?

[jabber01]

Is there still a niche for calculators? I mean, between engineering computers, calculation programs, and PDAs with scientific calculators in software, dedicated calculators seem to be more and more on the wane.

Sure, I keep one on my desk, both at work and at home, for incidental calculations, but any "heavy lifting" is done via spreadsheet or a quickie program, or the likes of Mathematica if you're a real freak.

So, is there still a point to "scientific calculators" which seem to be becoming PDAs with specialized keyboards, less the address book, less the calendar, with the math software in firmware.

Re:What's the point?

[jabber01]

Not at all. Kids can easily use a PDA in school, right? And with their notes, and "advance copies" of the exams loaded into their PDA, they don't need to do math at all!

Re:What's the point?

[Colin Walsh]

Put it this way, I have yet to find a decent enough math package for PalmOS that I feel replaces my trusty TI-85. Basically, I put it down to the fact that data entry on a PDA is far too cumbersome to do calculations fast enough for my liking. As well, a full blown computer may be undesirable in certain situations, or just too expensive to justify, especially for academic use (ie. on tests or assignments). I mean, who wants to boot up their notebook if they're just trying figure out the closest approach of a comet or the inverse of a small matrix?

-Colin

Re:What's the point?

[Colin Walsh]

Sorry, that's the Physics talking. I just meant it to be an example of the sort of slightly-more-than-trivial calculations that come up while in University (doing Physics, specifically). It could have easily have been "find the growth rate of an animal population with preadators" or "find the rate of a chemical reaction".

-Colin

Re:What's the point?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think it remains necessary for the educational market. For one, inspecting the memory before a test is known easier than knowing how to check several different types of PDAs for hidden files. It is also easier and quicker to punch in a single key vs. typing out "sin(".

I still use my TI-85. What I like it best for is to see several lines of entries and to be able to edit the last entry, incase I made a mistake.

TI-85

[jargoone]

Ah, that brings back memories. I was 1337 enough to have the 85 instead of the standard issue 81 that everyone else had in high school. I don't remember what the differences were, but everyone was jealous. And it was BLACK. Not as cool as the geeks that turned the TVs on and off with their HPs, but still cool.

I remember writing programs to save myself 5 minutes a problem on my Econ exams in college. The professor was always puzzled why I would finish so quickly. I told him at the end of the quarter.

Cheating

[lxt]

Surely calculators like this offer more chances for cheating on your exams (SAT, AP etc) - the programming features on these calculators can instead be used to store plain text, enabling you to write down formulae, notes etc.

I've used a graphing calculator for SATs, and was never asked to erase the memory. With USB, you could simply type up your notes on a PC, transfer them, and use them...

Re:Cheating

[JackPo]

TI realizes that this could be used as a cheating tool. Around a yr (or 2 yrs ago), it developed a piece of software call TestGuard that is suppose to help alleviate this problem (it wipes slsected portion of a calculator). I am not sure why this did not quite catch on.. If students really want to cheat, the HP49G+ is by far a superior version for cheating, its text editor allows for panning, and with a 1 gig SD card inserted into its expansion, can you imagine the PDFs that could be stored? ;) Due to these problems, you can see that the AP has now split into 2 sections, and most college courses ban calculators outright.

Re:Cheating

[Sage Gaspar]

Let's be serious, now. What plain text are you going to store for the SATs? Every word in the English language? How to perform simple arithmetic? We're not talking rocket science here.

AP exams let you use a graphing calculator on some open answer sections. They don't care about your stored notes. Hell, they give you a formula sheet. And let me tell you, even with a graphing calculator and the provided formula sheet, the AP Physics and AP Chem test were damn near the hardest tests I've ever taken, including college (the hardest being the Putnam, hehe). If you don't know what you're doing, there's no chance in hell that a calculator is going to save you.

Re:Cheating

[Txiasaeia]

Lol... I typed in notes on my HP42 the long way, usually equations that we were supposed to memorise. Look at me now! I'm an... well, English major :)

Re:Cheating

[eean]

If you were to bother looking at the rules (for at least the ACT, which is the one I took a few years ago) you would know that it isn't cheating to have those materials on your calculator. Your not allowed to have test materials or communicate with your calculator, but thats it IIRC. Realistically, having math materials on your calculator isn't that helpful due to time constraints. Time isn't as much a problem for the AP (at least in the bio and government APs I took), so I wonder what they do for that. Not that time plays a small role for AP tests, but its /very/ important for the ACT, it's almost an IQ test. I imagine its simular for SAT.

Re:Cheating

[Sage Gaspar]

On the math and computationally geared sciences, time is a serious issue and the problems are very difficult. I can't have gotten more than 3/5 of the AP Physics questions right, yet I got a 5 on the test. That's with a graphing calc and the formula sheet that they provide.

Having taken the full gamut from history to english to calc to chemistry, chemistry and physics were by far the hardest. Not to say that the rest aren't difficult, but it's a whole other level.

Re:cheating

[toddestan]

That's one thing about the TI-85 I have. It has never crashed unless I was intentionally screwing with it. I got one of the first TI-86's, and that thing pissed me off more than once, what good is that extra ram if it likes to wipe itself out? Besides, the 86 was slower than the 85.

I still haven't figured out the new TI-84's, and why TI is trying to kill off the 85-86 line. The 84 lacks a lot of what the 85 has - polynomial solver, system of equation solver, unit conversions, complex numbers, better interface, better screen - to name a few. If you ask me, the 85 is the best TI out there - powerful enough to be useful, simple enough to be easy to use and fast. The 89/92 and HP's 48 and 49 series can do a lot that the 85 can't do - but I find if I need the kind of power I don't have with the 85, I'm better off running to the computer instead.

I'm not really interested in the 84, or the new 89. If TI made a TI-87 that addresses some of the flaws in the 85/86, with the features the 83 series have picked up (like the better stats package), plus a faster processor and maybe flash ram I might pay attention. Otherwise I'll stick to my 85.

Re:Cheating

[juhaz]

Well, students have been cheating with calculators for decades, and with other means long before that. It's nothing new. And it won't go away, whatever you do.

Yes, it's possible, yes it's harder to prevent or notice than a crib, but hey, at least the pupils are resourceful, even if it's not the area of expertise they're doing test about for. <g>

Besides, it's realistic... school is supposed to prepare you for the real world, and there are no "cheating" restictions there.

And they're dropping the 86

[HoneyBunchesOfGoats]

Personally, the 86 was my favorite of the bunch. Most powerful and straightforward of the calculators, but not crossing the line of being more like a computer. But instead of upgrading the 86, they're making programs that provide some of it's unique functions to the other calculators:

A suite of TI-86 features is being created for the TI-83 Plus and TI-89 in the form of free APPS, including:

* Polynomial Root Finder
* Simultaneous Equations Solver
* Differential Equation Graphing (built into the TI-89)
* Constants and Conversions (built into the TI-89)

Re:Abacus

[tuxette]

When I was in Thailand, I encountered a lot of merchants who used the abacus to calculate whatever. People who had calculators used them more to show tourists the Arabic number price than to calculate the final sum.

Let me be the first to say...

[sithkhan]

AMEN! My 48GX has been a friend to me, lo these past 9 years ... but so has the interest payment to Service Merchandise ...

Summary of competition (HP calculators)

[Ophidian P. Jones]

The RPNs worth buying are:

16C - awesome calculator for programmers, especially embedded work. There is no better number system converter available at any price. No I can't do bin/dec/hex in my head faster than the 16C and neither can you. Expensive due to relatively low numbers produced.

42S - pricey, even used, but excellent. Two line display, a replacement for the 15C.

32SII - somewhat like a 42S but with single line display, not so nice to use.

15C - same form factor as 16C. At the time HP's top scientific.

11C - a simpler 15C

10C - a simpler 11C

All the above have solid old-HP build quality, excellent key feel and outstanding battery life.

Older HPs are also usable (and may be preferred) - but they have even greater collector status and sometimes fetch higher prices. They will go through batteries faster and the red LEDs can be harder to see.

Forget the 48 models, the 49 and all the new stuff. The 48GX is OK if you have to have graphing but the single and dual-line models have better UI for daily use. The 49? HP died when Carly took over. Now they make pretty colored plastic boxes that only work with windows and they have forgotten how to spell "engineering". In fact they fired all the engineers and HP is now run by MBAs in shiny suits.

(I own 16C, 42s, 15C and 11C models.)

Re:Summary of competition (HP calculators)

[koehn]

The RPNs worth buying are:

16C - awesome calculator for programmers, especially embedded work. There is no better number system converter available at any price. No I can't do bin/dec/hex in my head faster than the 16C and neither can you. Expensive due to relatively low numbers produced.

Umm, the best calculator for programmers is... the computer. Last I checked, any reasonable language lets you enter numbers in any base and does the conversions for you. My PC's a ton faster than your 16C, and whenever I'm programming it's right there with me.

Most reasonable debuggers will convert numbers to whatever format you want. Even Strings can be converted to hex, and let's see your 16c do that for even a 15 byte String. Not to mention character encoding...

I haven't owned a calculator in 10 years. Only reason I'd by one is to help with fractional math in the wood shop. Fucking imperial measurements.

Re:Summary of competition (HP calculators)

[madcow_ucsb]

Well, I love my 48GX. And my brother just upgraded from a 48G to a 49G+ (or whatever their top of the line is now).

It's a bit frutier looking, bigger (and lighter, which doesn't seem right...) The buttons aren't quite like the olden days but *much* better than the rubber incident with the original 49.

And it's basically like a 48G on crack with metakern built in and better symbolic manipulation. Not a bad calculator.

And of course, if it's not RPN it's not a calculator. Every time I try to do even a simple calculation on an algebraic I screw it up and have to try 3 times before I put thing in the right order...my brain is definitely stack-based.

Re:Summary of competition (HP calculators)

[int18]

Note that if you're not already enamoured with RPN, or have had much exposure to normal algebraic calculators, you should really make sure you're actually going to use an HP calculator before you pay a potentially sizeable chunk of cash for it.

bc does the job for me. The HP48 is just annoying.

Re:Summary of competition (HP calculators)

[djoiner]

The RPNs worth buying are:,,,

Dont forget the 28S, I'm still using mine from 15 years ago, when I can find batteries that is.

Do they even make that any more? I never felt the need to upgrade, so I haven't bought a calculator since.

Re:Summary of competition (HP calculators)

[chizz]

strange no mention of the HP41C?

Bordering on off-topic, but...

[Fortunato_NC]

My little bother did a steady business in TI-8x calculators during high school. Our high school required "accelerated" math students to purchase a TI-81 (or 83 or 85, whatever the "state of the art" was at the time) to use in class and on homework.

My brother would buy calculators cheap from kids at the end of school in June and sell them to the next year's students the next year for about $10 less than the school asked for the new ones. He probably made $250-$500 a year off those calculators. Not exactly chump change to a 15 year old.

Re:Bordering on off-topic, but...

[Krapangor]

This is illegal according to the monopoly and shortage exploition act. Might also be private accumulation fraud but IANAL.

Re:Bordering on off-topic, but...

[liquidsin]

Honest question: how is this illegal, but selling used cds/dvds/whatever is legal? Places that sell used cds buy them cheap and sell for less than what a new copy would cost, which looks like the same as what this kid was doing. And it's not like the school was their only other option if they chose not to purchase from him.

Re:Bordering on off-topic, but...

[connorbd]

sounds like not a bad plan...

Re:Bordering on off-topic, but...

[Night Goat]

He's joking, it's perfectly legal.

Re:Bordering on off-topic, but...

[ameoba]

Yeah, but WTF did the capital come from? We're talking 25-50 calculators at $60, which is really pushing what a kid that age would have access to, especially for some kind of school scheme..

The real question

[teklob]

Out of all those confusing model numbers, the real question is this: which one will let me play the most up to date games during physics and math?

Re:The real question

[CAPSLOCK2000]

That would be the TI-84SE . Allthough the 89/200 series have better hardware, the 83 has been used a lot more by college students. And we all know that those are the most fanatic gamers.

Re:The real question

[tepples]

Concealed GBA.

When I took the SAT...

[tuxette]

...we weren't allowed to use calculators. I still managed to cough up a 750 on the math part. I guess I would have gotten that 800 had I been allowed that calculator...*cough*

Re:When I took the SAT...

[ViolentGreen]

When I took it 7-8 years ago we could use calculators just not graphing calculators.

Re:When I took the SAT...

[tuxette]

Hmm...I may be heading towards the off-topic zone here, but my curiousity is killing me.

Do you feel you could have taken the SAT and done well without the calculators?

What I would be interested in looking at is a copy of the exam I took when I took it (late 80s) and compare it to the tests they give out now, or say 7 years ago. Especially when I keep hearing the SAT has been "dumbed down" (maybe it's just the English section? Remember the "regatta" debate, you old folks here? :)

Re:When I took the SAT...

[fishbowl]

"Do you feel you could have taken the SAT and done well without the calculators?"

I did damned well on it twice. Once with a 4-function calculator, and again without a calculator at all. Maybe it makes a difference that I'm a math major, maybe not.

TI Calcs

[fozzy(pro)]

I have a TI-85 and I have I wanted a better calc it seemed to me that the HPs had better support no to mention the infrared communications. If I were to get a new calc and wanted a small one I would certainly get an HP..IF I wanted a huge screen the The Ti-92 and voyage 200 would be the best choices for functionality.

The best alternative would be to use Mathmatica, MatLab, or a similar program on your windows, Mac, or Linux based pc and sacrifice portability for speed and functionality and make use of the extra cycles after surfing the net.

Regardless they all look to be quality products.

Re:TI Calcs

[stevesliva]

Matlab has all the user friendliness of fortran. God forbid it ever shows up in AP classes.

Re:TI Calcs

[pigscanfly.ca]

I'd say fortan was more userfriendly :-)
More seriously maple is much more userfriendly ...

You had calculators?

[jabber01]

Back in *my* day, we were only allowed to bring in some beans on strings. And only the yuppies could affor that. The rest of us had to carry a bucket of dirt, and make little piles on our desks. And we were THANKFUL!

Have you any idea how hard it is to compute logarithms by counting grains of dirt?

Kids these days! Sheesh!

Re:You had calculators?

[CrazyTalk]

Never had to do logs by counting grains of dirt, BUT I am old enough that we had to use log tables.

Re:You had calculators?

[addaon]

Okay, I give up. How do you make your dirt do logs? Mine was strictly five-function. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division are straightforward... for square root, you make a flattened pile, and throw a piece of chewing gum at it. Then, count the number of grains across the diameter of the crater. And then chew the gum... if you allow the dirt to accumulate, you'll get errors!

Nothing beat the old TI-85

[Schezar]

Ahh, the good old days...

Back in High School, the teachers didn't necessarily understand the technology. Some profs would ban them altogether to prevent cheating. Others had no idea things like, say, ANSWERS and FORMULAE could be stored in them.

I remember writing little programs that played cute little games. (And happened to have useful test information in the comments of the code.) I remember playing pong over that crappy link cable in the back of Calculus class.

Best of all, I remember when the TI-86 came out. Sure it had more memory, but my parents just didn't understand a geek's needs. ("You already HAVE a calculator.")

Of course, geekery knows no bounds. Scant weeks later I'd overclocked my 85. Sure, it went through a whole set of batteries a week, and the games wouldn't work anymore, but it was FAST! (Faster than everyone else's 86 at least ^_~)

Re:Nothing beat the old TI-85

[kchayer]

Back in High School, the teachers didn't necessarily understand the technology. Some profs would ban them altogether to prevent cheating. Others had no idea things like, say, ANSWERS and FORMULAE could be stored in them.

Heh, I had a TI-85 in high school, and one year I had a math teacher who would go around and erase the memory on everyone's calculator before tests to prevent cheating. Now, I had programmed a pong-like game on mine, and aside from other useful data I had stored on there, I didn't want to lose it every time we had a test. And finding a friend who had a matching calculator so I could either copy some programs or completely dump my calculator to his was a pain. Plus, the computer my family had a the time was still a Commodore 128, so no backing up to the PC.

So, I came up with a solution (tm). I wrote a simple program that walked through the steps of erasing the memory. All I had to do was start the program before the teacher arrived at my desk, and the teacher would walk through the set of keystrokes required to reset the calc. It would dutifully display the menus and appropriate responses, plus (unfortunately) the little moving line in the upper corner that indicate that a program was running. (I prayed he wouldn't notice.) The programming interface even had the ability to display menus and take F key inputs, but it couldn't do two level popup menus, so I even painstakingly drew (in graph mode) the two-level menu required at a certain point in the process. At that point in the program, instead of using the menus, it would display that stored image, and wait for the right keys to be pressed before continuing.

The first (and only, iirc) time I used it, I was scared to death. It worked like a champ, though, and I didn't lose my precious program until my batteries died a couple of weeks later before I had a chance to backup. So much for that.

Screw that...

[FortKnox]

I'll just pay for someone to titanium plate my sliderule, damnit! :-P

great

[Nrlll9]

the currrent state of calculator technology is sad. they got so long to improve and they still have shitty UI and small memory. someone like apple ought to get into the market.

Re:great

[connorbd]

Now that's an idea... great one for the students, beyond frightening for the teachers, and we'd probably get FireWire calculators on top of it.

What bothers me is the price gouging, even at Staples... you're going to tell me a vanilla 83+ should cost as much as a Palm Zire21? Hell, an old-school DragonBall Palm is slightly more powerful than an 89/92/V200, runs rings around an 83/84, and you can get either an original Zire or a reconditioned m500 for about $80. If someone put a symbolics math package on a par with the 89/92 operating system on the Palm platform, we'd have an issue...

Re:great

[Nrlll9]

they should have good pen recognition thing to enter mathematical notation. that would be a lot easier to enter algebraic problems, etc

My favorite calculator

[pcraven]

My favorite calculator was one I picked up in the late 80's. It had 128 built in formulas and was from Radio Shack. You could program several other fomulas as well.

What I haven't seen other calculators do well, is that this had excellent support for greek and other odd math characters. And the calculator was very small. I didn't usually like hauling around the TI's.

The build in formulas are nice when you can't remember some formula you really needed. Very handy.

The calculator is similar to some of Casio's calculators today, but I don't see them with good support for math symbols. I'd still use it today, except that it fell apart. You have to squeeze it together just right and hold it that way for it to work correctly.

Re:My favorite calculator

[rusty0101]

I suspect that the calculator you are talking about is the Radio Shack EC-4023. I have forgotten how to program it, and for that matter how to use some of the more advanced functions, however I keep one at my desk. (I also have a couple of HP calculators, 11C, and 15B that I generally keep at home.)

I don't know if the EC-4023 ever shows up on ebay, but if the labeling had all worn off, you have that info to work from...

Re:My favorite calculator

[pcraven]

You are right. Here is a site with info on it. Lovely calculator. Also known as Casio fx-5000F.

It reminds me...

[Pollux]

Back eight years ago when I was starting my Algebra II class in high school, I went shopping with my parents to get what "I needed" to get...a TI-82. Mom looked at the calculator, looked at the price ($78 at the time) and said, "Pff...these things will probably be worth $20 in five years."

Course, the TI-83 (same one that they sold back when I was in high school, just a slight change in design) is priced now for $89, the same as it was back eight years ago. Or I could get the TI-83 SILVER (which is what the TI sales reps are REALLY trying to push on schools now...I know because I'm a math teacher now), which retails for $114 (just because it has 128k ROM and a bunch of crappy "ecucational" software...though anyone who knows anything about basic programming can muster up the same thing with TI's programming interface).

The point is, you're still getting pretty much the same calculator with almost all of the same abilities. Sure, you can crunch recursive functions, large matricies, and integrals faster, (plus you get more software, which is really not necessary for 95% of customers), but there's really little to justify the need for a SILVER edition when 1) you pay $25 more for 128K ROM and software, and 2) electronic components have gotten a lot cheaper over the last eight years but the prices of TI calculators have not ever gone down.

Reminded me of a NCTM conference I went to last year...there was a calculator dealer trying to sell some old calculators. There was a TI-92 there, brand-spanking new, for $60. Asked them why it was so darned cheap, and the saleswoman said that "TI now has the TI-92 plusses and discontinued the 92s, so there's no support from TI, just a 30-day warranty from us." Difference between the 92 and the 92-PLUS: 128K of ROM for additional software. Well, the 92-PLUSs retail for $189, but I really got almost all the functionality of a $189 calculator for $60!

Anyways, all these "new" calculators that TI puts out, I really just wave my hand at them and say, "Baa." I already have one, and there's absolutely no need to "upgrade"!

Re:It reminds me...

[connorbd]

The Silver Edition exists, IMHO, primarily so TI can stop being forced to support the 85/86 platform. It's more or less compatible with the 83+, more powerful than the 86, and looks cooler (yeah! yeah!). You'll notice the USB link cable only supports the 86 on the Mac platform, not on Windows...

Re:It reminds me...

[Jon Abbott]

Market valuation can be a strange thing, especially with hi-tech items... It happens with automobiles as well -- everyone wants the latest and greatest, but they often fail to realize that yesterday's latest is almost as great (and often half price).

I'd say the worst industry this happens with is school textbooks. One edition is usually nearly identical to the previous version, but is offered at a premium price. It is too bad they change the problems around to force people to "upgrade"!

Thankfully, in software, we have open source and free software which act as a hedge against this sort of monopolistic pricing. I hope that in the future, the concept of open source starts applying to published material such as school textbooks -- that way, people would do it for the love of it, and not just for the money. I bet this sort of change would result in a better product over time, as well. But I digress...

Re:It reminds me...

[damiam]

more powerful than the 86

Megahertz-wise, yes. Mathematically, the 86 can solve polynomials and systems of linear equations, convert between units, and a few other nice things, as well as having a much nicer screen.

Re:It reminds me...

[damiam]

you pay $25 more for 128K ROM

While I agree that TI calculators are ridiculously overpriced (although that's because that's what the market will bear), the TI-83+SE actually has 1.5MB of ROM, much more than the TI-83+'s 160KB. Of course, short of ebooks (which are only really usable on the 89 and 92), there's no real use for all that space.

Re:It reminds me...

[dj245]

Everywhere I go and see TI calculators for sale, I laugh my ass off. TI-83's, at least $90. TI-83 Silvers, over $100.

I bought my TI-83+ over four years ago on ebay for about $60. It came with the computer cable ($20 most places), transfer cable, and even batteries. New in the box even! I later sold it on ebay for a paltry $45, and used to money to get a used TI-92+ for under $80. Now *that's* a calculator!

The point is, shop around on the used/sorta-used market, and you can find these things super cheap. I sold mine for $45 to someone. I'm sure they were thrilled.

there are no more workhorse calculators

[Hollins]

No one make a decent calculator anymore. People are hoarding 10 year old HPs off eBay. I'm using the 48SX I've had since 1990. My requirements aren't too severe:

• a large set of functions available through a configurable interface
• RPN
• a flexible programming language
• a decent-sized graphical display, but it doesn't need to be so large to make the calculator a mini-laptop. I need to use it in the field
• tactile buttons that always register and are sufficiently durable to last a couple decades
• a large 'enter' key prominently placed near the center of the keypad
• a tough case made of thick plastic that doesn't creak when squeezed, can be dropped a few times without damage and isn't painted with some shiny paint that flakes off. Actually, which isn't painted at all except for the silk-screened indicators over the buttons

HP stopped making an attempt at the last three some time ago. If I have to put up with a cruddy interface, eventually I'll take the speed hit and use a PDA with stylus. Until then, I'm hoarding old calculators off eBay. The 38SII, while not graphical, is probably the best professional scientific calculator for everyday use, but even they're getting expensive. I'd stick to old 48s/g for graphing.

Re:there are no more workhorse calculators

[fryguybob]

I wouldn't trade my HP 32SII for anything. Personally I don't see the need for a graphing calculator as a professional. If I just want to visualize a simple graph, I can do it in my head or on a napkin (graphing by hand seems to be a lost art). If I want a detailed graph of something that I cannot visualize in my head (or on a napkin). I use a computer. (lets see, do I want to look at a graph in monochrome 131x80 or full color, antialiased 1400x1050? Oh and the larger one graphs muuuuch faster.)

oh, check out one of the coolest websites ever:

http://www.hpmuseum.org/

Re:there are no more workhorse calculators

[morcheeba]

and remember, the 48sx/gx's buttons don't have silk-screen indicators... they are actually molded plastic color that goes all the way through the keys, so it's impossible for them to rub off. I just wish other people making calculators and laptop keyboards went to that expense to make something right.

Re:there are no more workhorse calculators

[Hollins]

good point

Re:there are no more workhorse calculators

[nyssa]

Maybe I should try selling my HP-32S on Ebay. It's a nice calculator, but I never use it. I have it at work for the purpose of doing base conversions and simple calculations, but I usually just run an interactive Ruby session, where I have better command-line editing, and I don't have to dig the 32S out of my desk drawer. Maybe there's an engineer out there that could put it to good use.

6Mhz

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when my Amiga 500 had an 8 MHz 68000. I bought a Telebit modem which had a 16Mhz 68302. Had to buy a A4000. Couldn't stand to have a faster processor in my modem then in my workstation. Now even calculators are catching up to these speeds. I wonder if you can do a bullwhip on these (BLWP -- branch and link with workspace pointer) like the good old 99/4A.

Better gaming!

[DarkHand]

Back when I was in high school, TI graphing calculators were used for one tihng, and one thing only... GAMING! :) This new release just means we're that much closer to having a classroom-allowed Gameboy. :)

Fits the mantra ... kinda

[BigumD]

"News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."

Hmm, well it's half right at least.

Hell, it's just useful for manipulating expression

[Ayanami Rei]

I mean christ, it can handle arbitrary precision constants. There are times when I can't trust myself on pencil and paper, but my TI-89 never lies.

TI-89 owns you.

[Ayanami Rei]

68010@10MHz, OC'd.

banging out 16-bit motorola assembly, no MMU.
ROM with built-in CAS.

Hardcore.

Re:TI-89 owns you.

[corsec67]

Well, my HP49G+ might have something to say to you:
75MHz ARM processor, running at 32 bits.

Re:Hell, it's just useful for manipulating express

[webtre]

but my TI-89 never lies

Or so you think! It could be intentionally giving you bad answers to screw you up!
Cast the demon away!

Ti-84 Plus Copper Edition

[MonkeysKickAss]

Why dont they just call them copper plus and iron plus

Also includes...

[k3vmo]

Also includes new feature to calculate the number of years it'll take me to afford the 40gb iPod...

An article about graphing calculators???

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

What is this, some kind of geek Web site?

Simple explaination of the differences.

[Annoying]

The 84's are basically the same as the 83's of the same type. Except I think they are educator versions. They all include (as a highlight in their features) projector compatibility, and feature faster processors allowing them to quickly graph on screen for students thus wasting less class time. Other features like changable faceplates, allow a teacher to distinguish their calculator (if it's loaned out perhaps) from a common one.

Differences between a TI-83+ and TI-84+, 6mhz to 15mhz processor, same otherwise from a student perspective with educator features (projector).

Differences between a TI-83 SE and TI-84 SE, none that I can see from the promotional page from a students perspective. Same memory same processor, just more educator features.

Looks like there's little need for students to rush out and buy the latest model of these. Did I miss anything with the features? I went by memory of the TI-83 models capabilities, but the TI-83 SE is 2.5x faster than the processor in 83+ and 83's which would put it at 15mhz as the 84's all have.

It doesn't make any difference

[Flavio]

Using an HP 49G, TI-89 or any high end calculator in those tests is probably going to slow you down with menus and multi-line displays.

I used an HP32SII when taking the SATs. It's a very practical programmable single line RPN. It obviously doesn't have any graphing, matrix or symbolic calculus capabilities, but it still satisfies most of my needs (I'm now a 4th year EE student). It's also a mean dice roller for D&D sessions :)

For all the rest I use either an HP 49G, Matlab, Octave or Maple.

Re:OK, you asked for it

[CrazyTalk]

You forgot to mention:

Yeah, but does it support bluetooth

Yeah, but does it support Ogg Vorbis

Many improvements, BUT....

[haggar]

...what's up with the still low resolution? That's about the only really important thing I have been hoping for the last 8 years to be improved, in graphing calculators. I looked at these new TIs, and the graphs still look krix-krax. No thanks. If that 15 MHz CPU doesn't get a decent screen resolution to go with it. it's no great improvement. Most mobile phones nowadays have better graphics.
As it is, I don't see any reason to replace my trusty old Casio fx8000.

Prices

[Janek Kozicki]

I checked out prices at froogle:

Texas Instuments Voyage 200 costs about 200 USD
TI-83 Plus costs 17 USD (!!)
TI-84 Plus Silver Edition is not found

200 USD vs. 17 USD?! what's going on here?

Re:Prices

[nberardi]

You do realize the price from the TI-83 Plus is a book and not the actual calculator?

Re:Prices

[Janek Kozicki]

yeah, my apologies. I just realised that ;) sorry.

this means that new TI calculators are not yet avaiable on froogle, foolish me ;)

Re:Prices

[SirLeNerd]

Check your results first ...
$17 USD is for the book "TI-83 Plus Graphing Calculator For Dummies"

Re:Prices

[pigscanfly.ca]

Thats the price for a book you stoner.

Diminishing returns

[Unknown Kadath]

I don't think I'll be upgrading from my trusty TI-85. It has been dropped, kicked, and occasionally drop-kicked regularly for the past 10 years and still works perfectly. (I guess this is a plug for the 85...do they even still make it?) I have a 93 which mostly sits in a drawer. Whenever I've considered using it, I've realized that I'd be better served by a computer with a math package--bigger display, easier input, more flexible software, faster processing. So, what is the point of a 15 mHz calculator, or a USB-capable one? You don't need something like that in high school (would a student even be allowed to use one?), and you have better resources in college and in the working world.

Bet you could write some great games for these uber-calculators, though (there were already good games available for the 83/85/86/89 when I was in high school.) Which would have been all the reason I would have needed to get one, had they existed back when I needed something to keep me awake through AP Calc.

-Carolyn

Re:Diminishing returns

[ldspartan]

They discontinued the 85 a while ago, about a year after the 86 came out. The 82 and 85 were discontinued at the same time, having been replaced by the 83 and 86 respectively. The 86's OS is very similiar to the 85's, and it makes a suitable replacement.

You can trust me! I managed the archives at ticalc.org for two years or so :)

--
lds

Re:Diminishing returns

[slamb]

So, what is the point of a 15 mHz calculator, or a USB-capable one? You don't need something like that in high school (would a student even be allowed to use one?), and you have better resources in college and in the working world.

TI likes to sell its calculators as (among other things) data collectors. The USB interface would presumably be used as an easier way to upload to the computer. Think high school physics classes.

Oh, and yeah, a high school student would be allowed to use one. I was still in high school when the TI-89 came out; I was allowed to use one (although maybe not on calculus tests - its been a while). I was allowed to use it on the AP Calculus test, strangely enough. (What a joke. The test was easier than our teacher's exams to begin with, then I could use the calculator to verify all my answers were correct beyond setting up the initial equation. I didn't even bother finishing the thing and I still got a five. Arrogant, yeah, but I got away with it.) I don't think the incrementally faster processor would make it unallowable. Or the USB port - there's nothing you'd be allowed to plug into it during class, of course.

Bet you could write some great games for these uber-calculators, though (there were already good games available for the 83/85/86/89 when I was in high school.)

I imagine so. The screen would almost certainly be the limiting factor, not the processor or memory. (It already was for a lot of games.)

Re:Diminishing returns

[FuzzyFurB]

The 92/89/voyage 200 have one big step up over the 83/85/86: ti-gcc. I spent most of my free time (and class time) programming the 85 in basic and then assembly. (anybody out there remember mega racers?). I have to admit I am a bit jelous of high school kids today because if they buy an 89 then can learn c and make games using c instead of assembly. it is so much easier to make quality games in c then it was in assembly and it shows, great games come out for all three of those platforms every day with grayscale graphics, link support, leves, etc. I see all the things I wanted to accomplish on my 85 but was unable to because things took so much longer and were harder to debug. That is what these new calcs have over the older ones. ti-gcc. and the funny thing is, ti didn't provide it, the open source community did. :)
-Will Stokes, creator of Mega Racers

Re:Diminishing returns

[gid]

heh, the best thing I ever programmed was a multiplayer tic tac toe game, complete using graphics and all, you could either use 1 ti82 or 2 ti82s and the link cable :)

I also had other useful programs like a (fast!) prime factorization program, and converting abitrary units program, junk that's probably included in the new calculator's functionality set

too bad I lost all my stuff when my battery died, occassionally my data would dissappear when I remove all the triple a batteries in it, it was only a few years old, so the lithium battery shouldn't have been dead yet... oh well, I'm over it now, all that stuff is long gone.

Re:Diminishing returns

[Unknown Kadath]

TI likes to sell its calculators as (among other things) data collectors. The USB interface would presumably be used as an easier way to upload to the computer. Think high school physics classes.

Hmm, didn't even think of the uses in labs. TI ought to get together with NI (makers of LabVIEW), and release a school DAQ package. (Of course, in my day, we ran physics labs with a piece of string and a ruler, and we liked it that way! Sometimes we got a stopwatch, and once, when we were really good, the teacher let us use an Apple II! Kids today are soft!)

Oh, and yeah, a high school student would be allowed to use one. I was still in high school when the TI-89 came out; I was allowed to use one (although maybe not on calculus tests - its been a while). I was allowed to use it on the AP Calculus test, strangely enough.

In class, we couldn't use anything that could handle symbolic differentiation/integration, hence my wondering. I don't remember about the AP test; I didn't pay attention to which calculators weren't allowed because my mighty 85 was okay for everything. I hope the rules change to disallow the 86 and higher on the AP. Really, I'd like to see less use of calculators in math classes, period. It's a disservice to students that the calculators do the work for them. You don't learn the Tao of calculus punching numbers. I'm not just being crotchety because I didn't have a calculator that cool--understanding the way math works is so much more necessary for learning to think than getting the right answers is, even if it's the other way around for grades and placement testing.

For physics and chemistry, though, you can take my 85 and its unit conversion functions away from me when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

-Carolyn

Re:Diminishing returns

[slamb]

I don't remember about the AP test; I didn't pay attention to which calculators weren't allowed because my mighty 85 was okay for everything. I hope the rules change to disallow the 86 and higher on the AP. Really, I'd like to see less use of calculators in math classes, period. It's a disservice to students that the calculators do the work for them. You don't learn the Tao of calculus punching numbers. I'm not just being crotchety because I didn't have a calculator that cool--understanding the way math works is so much more necessary for learning to think than getting the right answers is, even if it's the other way around for grades and placement testing.

I don't really think the TI-89 should have been allowed on the AP test, but it was, so I took advantage of it. (It would have been stupid not to.) But it definitely gave me an advantage over people who couldn't afford such things, so it was not fair. (At the time, it was $100, I think. Not out of reach for most people, but certainly enough to make people hesistate.)

But in general...I think it is beneficial for students to have these calculators when doing homework and such. Or on an exam, if everyone has one. It's not like you can avoid doing the work - if I didn't show every step, my high school teacher and my TAs and professors would have not given me many points. But you can check your work with it. You can explore things very quickly. A simple example: there are a lot of situations where integration by parts can be done two ways; both correct, one makes the problem easier, one makes it harder. For a beginning calculus student, you could waste a lot of time on the mechanics of doing it the "wrong" way. Time you could spend actually learning calculus.

Re:Diminishing returns

[HoldenCaulfield]

TI does have DAQ, both in it's Calculator Based Ranger (CBR) and it's Calculator Based Laboratory (CBL). Of course they also sell books, curriculum, etc, to really capitalize on the market.

They're both pretty slick devices. I remember in high school we used the CBL's with pH probes to do titrations (of course, we had to first do them manually with cabbage juice as an indicator)

When I was substitute teaching, the CBR (which is primarily a motion detector) was very useful to demonstrate to students why an equation and graph of the form y=mx+b was useful. TI has overhead projectors for their calculators, and one of their programs allows you to plot using the motion detector in real time. This wast he "A HA!" moment for a lot of my students, when they saw that the slope was rate (how fast they walked) and the intercept was their starting point from the sensor. Of course, we did some game type stuff, where you turn the projector off, and ask for a volunteer to come up, and walk in front of the sensor to get a graph that has a line with slope 10m/s, and intercept of 2 meters. The kid on crutches had a blast trying to do this. It's also fun trying to watch them when you ask them to get lines with undefined slope, and is a good lead in as to why a vertical line is not a function . . . man I miss teaching . . .

Re:Diminishing returns

[strike2867]

I used it on my AP too. But when I did it in 02 you needed to have all your work down anyway. I didnt, whenever there was a hard question I didnt feel like doing, I would just put it in the calculator, wrote some BS until the calculator solved it for me. When I saw the calculator had a solution, I would just put an = after whatever I was writing and put down the answer as if it was from heaven. Finished test early, took a nap.

Re:Diminishing returns

[vitaflo]

I don't think I'll be upgrading from my trusty TI-85. It has been dropped, kicked, and occasionally drop-kicked regularly for the past 10 years and still works perfectly.

I agree, I got a TI-85 10 years ago as well and it's been the best $100 I've ever spent. I don't know how many times that thing has saved my ass. What's even more impressive is that just a few weeks ago I had to replace the batteries, and noticed they were the original batteries I had put in it when I bought the thing! What other handheld do you know of that has 10 years of battery life? ;)

ROM != RAM

[corsec67]

I HATE this: they say 5x more RAM, but actually, it has the SAME amount of ram. It has more Flash ROM, but that is not nearly as usefull as pure ram.

Like on the 83+ compared to the 83, the 83+ actually has LESS memory than the 83, not more.

Sheesh.

Re:ROM != RAM

[digital bath]

Actually, the 83+SE (and the 84SE, I would imagine) have 8 more 16k pages of RAM (or 128k more RAM total) than the 83+. The OS does not use them, but any assembly program can swap them in and play around with them.

I'm keeping my Dell, thank you.

[Tester]

I've repaced my TI-83+ with a Dell Inspiron and I'm not going back. Even if I admit that the Dell is a little bulkier, its so much more powerful. It can do symbolic solving of complex integrals, etc. I dont see why people are buying those programmable calculators. Especially considering that I have to use a non-programmable one in exams at school anyways.

The TI-89 rocks

[grahamsz]

It would have been banned in one of my maths classes (since my bro is taking the class now and it is) but it was a godsend. I picked up a few in Canada because it hadn't been released in the uk at that point.

One of my lecturers jaw literally dropped when i showed it performing some complex integration that he'd spent 10 minutes doing by hand, in a single step and complete with greek symbols.

I don't really buy the argument that it's 'cheating' to have a calc like that. Learning how to master your calculator takes about as long as learning the techniques themselves, but it's invaluable to double checking answers and the likes.

Re:HP

[kertong]

Agreed. I have an old HP48G I bought about 7 years ago, and it stil works flawlessly. The only regret is that I didn't buy an HP48GX.

RPN = awesome. :)

So which one should I get?

[alecf]

So I'm starting as a student teacher in about 2 weeks for a high school Algebra II course.. the course lives and dies by its box of TI-83's.. I'd like to buy a personal TI-xx so I can hack around with it at home..

I suppose I could just go buy a TI-83 Plus, but I wanted to see if anyone had any particular recommendations....

When I was in school all we had were these crappy Casio gfx-7000 calulators - I've never owned a TI, so frankly I can't figure out the difference between the 83, 86, 89, etc...

Being a student (and future teacher) I don't have a lot of money.. so what matters most to me is price, but I'm willing to spend an extra $10 or $20 if there is some key, awesome feature I would get by buying another model.. but at the same time, I want the basic operation to be as close to a TI-83 as possible.

Thoughts?

Re:So which one should I get?

[Sage Gaspar]

If you're going to be working a lot with TI-83s, definitely pick up a TI-83 (or plus, not much difference). The command set and (especially) the interfaces vary between each kind of calc, and it's not going to work well if you and your class are on completely different wavelengths.

Re:So which one should I get?

[pdxmac]

Thoughts?

Yup. You're essentially attempting to become a high school teacher, which is a great gig. (I know because I am one.) You are not attempting to become the engineer with the coolest pocket-protector-filler. So, it seems your two most basic concerns are utility in the classroom and price.

You could get a cheaper graphing calc from casio or sharp, but they wouldn't really help you prepare lessons and see how the students need to solve your exercises, because the tool you use would be different than the tool the students use. Thus, I'd get a TI-83, because that is what the kiddies use. Maybe you can get one used to save a few bucks.

Of course, I remember buying a TI-83 my first year teaching (6 years ago) and then, 2 weeks later, being invited to a training where the "compensation" was being given a TI-83. Damn...

Re:So which one should I get?

[rpillala]

Teaching is a lot of fun. It's very different from what you might think before you begin, so really pay attention to how you feel about student teaching.

For calculators, I'd get the same thing students use, or maybe an 83+ if you can't find on eBay like someone else suggested. There are also emulators, which can be very useful for showing a class which buttons to press in what order. This is often the biggest hurdle I have with calculator use. Kids miss a button and immediately they're so lost. If you can project an image of the emulator, they can see you press the buttons as opposed to just seeing the result on the projector screen.

Also, take a look at the calculators they have at school and see if any have the coordinate axes turned off or the stat plots activated. Maybe the contrast is turned all the way down. Maybe the display window is set to show nothing. These hijinks while hilarious (!) are incovenient at times. It's worthwhile to know how to adjust those settings.

For that reason, it's worthwhile to know the limitations and settings on the specific calculator that students will be using. If you design lessons using the calculator and students trip up on one button it just slows things down. I find more of this effect with my Algebra II's than with other classes.

Hope that helps, and good luck!

Ravi

Re:So which one should I get?

[Sage Gaspar]

Just wondering (and this is a serious question, not a jab or something), what do you use graphing calcs for in Algebra II? Graphing, or just logs and such? I have to say, I learned a lot by getting a feel for the basic functions graphing by hand.

Re:So which one should I get?

[alecf]

I'm kind of half kidding, half serious with my first answer: in this day and age, kids want and instantaneous result. They don't want to spend 30 minutes graphing a complex function (or even x^2) at all, especially if there is a faster alternative. Besides, they've done that already in Algebra I.

But more seriously, its easy for those of us who have long been out of Algebra II to think that most kids have the patience and interest to continue to graph functions by hand when they've been doing it for at least a year or two... sure, us math geeks might like that but most kids will get the big picture stuff but get easily hung up on details. As the functions get more complex, the details just get hairier, and the actual concepts being learned are lost.

Basically, imagine you've never seen a sine wave before. Would you rather try to graph sin(1), sin(2), sin(3), etc by hand and get a bunch of random points, or would you like someone to say "here's how to graph sin(x) now lets figure out what makes it look that way, where the peaks and valleys are, etc"?

Re:So which one should I get?

[alecf]

Thanks for all the great responses folks! Sounds like an 83 or 83+ is what I want - I wasn't sure if there was a lot of difference in the way the "UI" (i.e. buttons) worked between the different models.

And yes, I'm going to be a high school teacher, this student teaching is the last step in the process...

Re:So which one should I get?

[rpillala]

Sometimes we use the calculator to graph things and for number crunching. Other times I use the calculator to point out the limitations of such technology. For example, the calculator does a less-than-perfect job of graphing rational functions. The calculator won't show you a parabola's axis of symmetry unless you already know where it is. You can get the calculator to find the vertex for you, but that means having it compute the min or max value and I wouldn't show them that unless they understood how the calculator was determining it. So, not till calculus :) I think it's important for kids to know that they're still smarter than the calculator and that they can sometimes get better (and faster) results drawing a graph by hand. They also don't really understand Garbage-In-Garbage-Out unless you show them.

Our study of parabolas was done just about completely by hand. Before they knew that the "a" value in "y = ax^2 + bx + c" can tell you whether the parabola opens up or down, we tried a few different ones so they could tell me that it's the sign of "a" that determines this. It's much better if they tell me than if I tell them.

Also, some applications we examine use large numbers or irrationals. In those cases, I can't let students' computation weakness get in the way of the math goals I have. When I taught middle school I was generally opposed to this kind of tradeoff (and I still am for middle school kids) but by the time students are in grades 11 and 12, there's not much I'm going to be able to do for their computation skills in the time we have.

Finally, and this is the worst reason I can think of, our state seems to be creating and renaming tests every year or so. The school district has uniform midterm and end-of-course exams on which students are permitted to use a calculator and for which I must prepare them. I'm not one to show them how to do every single thing in the calculator because then they can't solve novel problems.

In fact one of my kids was saying today that she advised her younger sister to "rely on the calculator" and I told her that unless she thought her sister was incapable of computing without it, she's really hurting her by telling her to rely on the calculator. I hope I got through. Yeesh.

Didn't expect this much answer did you? :)

Ravi

obligatory cheeky joke

[tuxette]

Is that a slide rule in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

The old Back in my day...

[Remlik]

There are a ton of comments here that start with "Back in my day we didn't have (insert thing here) and we did GREAT!"

Here's the reality people, most course curriculim has changed since the introduction of the graphing calculators. I took the advanced Calc courses at the UofMN and it was REQUIRED that you owned one to enroll for the class...why? Because the professors had designed the course to use the calculators to teach the students things that were nearly impossible to teach without the visualization via graphing calcs. Sure they could get a comp and a projector and throw up a pick on a screen but they wanted more, they wanted you to change the values of the functions, understand how different terms affected the outcome.

Calc would have been insanly boring, if all we did was take intergrals, derivs, and solve diffi-Qs. I'm glad I invested in a TI-92 before my freshman year, its versatility beat the crap out of every other TI on the market.

I should also preface this post with how my class was graded...getting the "answer" was considered 25% of the worth of the question, what they wanted and taught was the process of deriving the answer, so having a calc that could do integrals was rather useless, you still had to show your work, especially on tests..it was nice for checking to make sure you added 2+2 right.

Re:The old Back in my day...

[Zed2K]

The problem with teaching like this is the professors are relying on the calculator to show the students the results instead of learning why the results happen in the first place. Its more important to learn why things happen instead of learning that they do happen.

Yeah they do somewhat teach the why, but the emphasis is not really on that anymore.

When I were a lad...

[fiannaFailMan]

I never felt the urge to buy a graphing calculator because they were banned from all exams. Maybe the exams need to catch up, or something.

That said, I always liked Texas calculators from a hardware point of view. They were always more robust and easier to use than their flmsy Casio counterparts that always seemed a few years behind in terms of miniaturisation. I had a TI 30 which had nice clunky buttons that left you in no doubt that you had pressed them, and you could drop it on the floor without breaking it. You couldn't do that with a Casio. I later got a TI 35 which I still use to this day.

Calculaors

[darkstar949]

When I took the SAT in 2000 we were allowed to have the graphing calculators on certain portions of the test - but the memory had to be reset before the test and we had to do it while they watched. Some people I know lost alot of games that way. But as it turned out, there was nothing on the test that at most you would have needed a scientific calculator for (For the recored I used a TI-30X IIS (Two line scientific). In college the same thing applied in Calc I & II. But the catch is this: the TI-83 (Or equilivlant) was required for the class and the tests were adjusted accordingly (Longer and harder).

My calculator collection

[musingmelpomene]

I stole from my high school a TI-83, TI-85, TI-86, TI-89, and TI-92. My favorite is still the 92, which I kept all my notes for all my classes on - more portable than a laptop, and besides, everyone thinks you're the ubernerd if you're pushing buttons on a calculator in comparative lit.

The good ol days

[Cat_Byte]

I remember my old TI-85. That thing was awesome in college.

Weird they made one almost 10 yrs later called a TI-84...heh.

Sigged.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Calc would have been insanly boring, if all we did was take intergrals, derivs, and solve diffi-Qs.

You just summed up the first 3 years of college for me.

Re: Pure math?

[Skavookie]

Ok, I know I'm asking for an Offtopic or Redundant here but as a pure math major I have to reply to this :)

Diffeq is not pure math. At least, not the way it is usually presented (there are some more 'pure' aspects to it, but usually the focus is on applications). If you want pure math, try taking an abstract algebra course, or some upper division analysis or geometry.

The question of what 'pure math' means can be rather controversial, and there are those who insist that there is no such thing as pure math, that all mathematics has practical applications as its ultimate goal (I dissagree with this). If you are interested in what pure math is, you might take a look at What Is Pure Mathematics or A Gentle Introduction to the Mathematics Subject Classification Scheme. I'm sure there are many more pages discussing this topic, but I don't recall where they are off the top of my head.

As for calculators, in pure mathematics a calculator generally won't do you much good. Pure mathematics is usually more concerned with proving theorems than with performing computations. Calculators are great at performing computations, but they can't prove theorems for you. That said, a calculator can be a useful tool, and which calculator is best to use depends on personal preference and on the application. Personally I prefer HP over TI (it's a shame HP isn't making calculators anymore), but I understand that TIs can be easier to learn to use. However, it should be noted that HPs can do symbolic manipulations, matrix algebra, regressions and such, and yes, the HP can evaluate expressions in the traditional 'algebraic' format, and you can revise them, etc.

When HP went out of the calculator biz...

[porkchop_d_clown]

I had been trying to start a calculator collection, with my old HP-41, HP-11, HP-15 and HP-48. They all got sold to engineers begging me for them so they would have back ups in case their main calc ever failed.

I can't recall TI ever generating such loyalty. All I remember of my 70's and 80's TIs is how the keyboards always failed after a year or so...

eBay

[Detritus]

Check out eBay. You can get used and new TI calculators for considerably less than retail price. There are a lot of people who buy a calculator for a course or two and then sell it on eBay.

Yea. New boring expensive calculators!

[Wargames]

A really smart guy by the name of Albert Einstein said
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

Here's what I imagine:
Install J J: Home on a Pocket PC, go through the J programming language tutorials, and you get a programmable calculator- sized device that calculates, computes, and can graph fluctuating hyperparabaloids in technocolor, and while being a phone, a camera, an mp3 player, and...

I got the convergence monkey in my pocket.

-Wargames

Re:Yea. New boring expensive calculators!

[zztzed]

Install J J: Home on a Pocket PC, go through the J programming language tutorials, and you get a programmable calculator- sized device that calculates, computes, and can graph fluctuating hyperparabaloids in technocolor, and while being a phone, a camera, an mp3 player, and...

...and you can't use it on the SATs like you can a TI-89.

15B?

[porkchop_d_clown]

Surely you mean either 15C or 12B? The "B" models are/were the business calculators.

the 15C was cool for the matrix functions. I'd sit writing games for it during meetings.

Re:15B?

[rusty0101]

It was the B varient. I bought it for my Financial Accounting classes required for my degree. It's the first calculator I ran into that would handle a number greater than 10e100. It calculated up to 10e500. Can't envision needing a number that large for anything other than the National Debt, but it could handle it. (Note that my 11c could not, don't know if a 15c could either.)

Re:Yea. New boring expensive calculators!

[Zed2K]

Awww...you shouldn't be able to use graphing calculators at all. Basically you are learning how the calculator works instead of how to actually do the problem.

42S

[Detritus]

The 42S was a replacement for the 41C/CV/CX. The 32S was the replacement for the 15C, and was replaced by the 32SII.

Prices on many of the older HPs, like the 15C, 16C and 32SII, have reached ridiculous levels.

You can usually find good deals on the 28C/S, 48S/SX and 48G/GX. If you don't mind algebraic, 39Gs are dirt cheap.

super turbo champion ex plus alpha edition

[putch]

they also announced pledges to release more new calculators next year, including the greatly anticpated Marvel v. Texas Instruments.

Re:Yea. New boring expensive calculators!

[Wargames]

Do those who make rules for which devices may be used on tests value knowledge more than imagination?

What a difference a few years make.

[porkchop_d_clown]

In *my* (red LED) day, it was TI that had the lousy keys and flimsy engineering.

Ah, sweet nostalgia. The older I get, the better I was.

cheating

[MattFromOpp]

I have the TI-83 Plus SE, got it a year or two ago.

It's built in address book is very handy for storing formulas...however in my calc class, I slammed it full of formulas and when I attempted to access them during the final, it crashed...gah

be careful, and test it, before the test.

The new HP 49G+ sucks.

[glrotate]

I bought one having owned a 28 and 48SX. It's very cheaply constructed. It when it does garbage collection the screen starts flashing. The keyboard is so bad the 10% of keypresses don't register.

If you've got a 48G(X) don't bother.

The old ways of doing things are profitable

[gad_zuki!]

These TI's are so overpriced and schools have no problem making them mandatory for so many classes, even for non-math majors who will re-sell them to the bookstore for 20% of their worth, if they're lucky.

Its the same way with textbooks. I have a laptop, why don't they sell me my books in searchable PDF format and cut out the middle man, save me money, and let me be able to do context-sensitive searches? Iron out some stupid copy protection and save my back from carrying 20lbs of books everywhere.

Its even worse for little kids who can damage their backs and ruin their posture carrying around big, heavy books in their backpacks. A kid-friendly e-book could solve all these problems.

In the meantime there's easycalc for Palm-based PDAs for the math student without $100 burning a hole in his pocket and perhaps some fed up students will start scanning textbooks, upload them to P2P networks and force the digital age upon textbook publishers like we did to the RIAA.
There are how many online music sellers right now?

Come to think of it, the TI-8x line of calcs are the same price they were over ten+ years ago. TI is enjoying their vendor lock-in a little too much. I can't see why such a weak device should cost over $20 bucks. Or why they aren't selling economy models for that mandatory Calculus class.

Did you bother to read the manual?

[SuperBanana]

Forget the 48 models, the 49 and all the new stuff. The 48GX is OK if you have to have graphing but the single and dual-line models have better UI for daily use.

You obviously never bothered to read the section on "user defined keyboards", where you can map any command(and even a custom program) to any key. You can set up the "UI" any way you want; I assume you mean keys, because the very same commands do the very same things across all the RPN calculators. Swap, rotate, drop etc are all the same. Since you can take a set of RPN commands and make them in to a program, this is incredibly powerful. I found it endlessly useful, particularly in physics.

Dismissing the 48/49 series simply because you didn't like the fact that your favorite buttons for stack manipulation weren't there on the keyboard shows you never bothered to read the user manual. And I fail to see how 4-5 levels visible on the stack(more if you use one of the programs that installs a custom small font) is inferior to one or two lines. You can even make your own keyboard template if you wish; there are tab slots in the case to keep one in place. You can also just create scripts, and have different directories for different task sets that require similar functions. Oh, and i'd like to see you do a 3x3 matrix on your 1 line screen. Have fun pushing buttons if your RPN program returns more than one number...

Never confuse "crappy" with "I didn't understand how to use it." The 48/49 series, while being useable to do 2+2 kind of stuff, are really designed for people who do repetitive calculations and such. Not just graphing...

Re:Did you bother to read the manual?

[Noksagt]

You can set up the "UI" any way you want; I assume you mean keys, because the very same commands do the very same things across all the RPN calculators.

I had assumed he was also referring to the sleek form factor. I really wish I had a 15c, which is the most useful POCKET calculator I've seen.

Oh, and i'd like to see you do a 3x3 matrix on your 1 line screen.

I didn't find 3x3 matrices to be too cumbersome in the earlier series. The matrix editor is certainly slower than using the stack (though this was improved on the 49).

Have fun pushing buttons if your RPN program returns more than one number...

This is hardly burdensome.

Never confuse "crappy" with "I didn't understand how to use it." The 48/49 series, while being useable to do 2+2 kind of stuff, are really designed for people who do repetitive calculations and such. Not just graphing...

He didn't call them crappy--he said they aren't good for daily uses. I would agree if a requirement of "daily uses" is extreme portability without sacrificing substantial features. I have a 48gx & I use it when I'm at the desk. A 15c would really work better for me in the lab or field. It is smaller & more durable.

Moore's Law Resistant

[eean]

I agree, Moore's Law seems to have no effect on the TI series. They don't change price much at all. Suppose it could because the production cost of last decades processors doesn't really change. But still.

Not only that, their screens are so crappy compared to similarly priced Palm computers. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If Palm decided to put out a graphing calc (in other words, a Palm with an extended mathematical keypad and a math-oriented OS), it would make the TI calc series look like a joke.

I was really disappointed to see that, outside of new apps, it doesn't look like the new 89 has any extra functionality. The 89 is great for calc 1, but it becomes less useful into Calc 2 and Calc 3. Its "3-D support" is superficial at best. It can graph only one kind of 3-D graph and has issues dealing with 3-D functions and vectors in general. In other words, there is plenty of room for improvement, but TI obviously doesn't really care. I would hardly call "adding more memory" innovation. And few of the apps deal with more complicated mathematical concepts, and the apps are always less useful then integrated functionality in my experience. And you can install the apps on the TI-89 anyways, though perhaps not so many.

I smell a near-monopoly.

It's Carly Fiorina's fault

[HarveyBirdman]

Still keeping my HP28S (the one that fold up) running here. I may get one of the 48/49/whatever because it's getting hard to keep the battery door on the 28S on.

Old things made...old

[Pingsmoth]

TI hasn't had a new calculator since the TI-92. The 89 was a 92 in the old 83-style case, which was nice because teachers could rarely tell the difference. In Calc 107 we weren't allowed to use 92s, so I borrowed my brother's 89 instead. Yeah, it wasn't really fair, but I'm an English major so I figured it didn't really matter. But these "new" calculators are just re-hashes of the same old same old. The 84-plus has a super low-res display, no color support, and a meager 24K of RAM.

It would be nice to see an overhaul of the TI-8X line instead of small updates here and there.

Re:Graphic Calculators ruining math in schools.

[mc calculust]

How could you be smart enough to map your answer against plotting some Y3 using the Y-VARS function to make it Y1', yet not smart enough to take a simple derivative? Using your calculator like that still demands a familiarity with what you're doing. And for the second example, you could do the same thing with a scientific calculator.

Base conversion.

[zCyl]

16C - awesome calculator for programmers, especially embedded work. There is no better number system converter available at any price. No I can't do bin/dec/hex in my head faster than the 16C and neither can you. Expensive due to relatively low numbers produced.

Try the trivial (and free) script at the end of this post, run as:

base 0xF43B
base 0b0010101
base 0755
base 521

Output:
Dec Hex Oct Bin
493 1ed 755 111101101

Whenever you're programming, a command line is closer than a calculator.

#!/bin/sh

NUM="$1"

perl -e "printf (\"Dec\tHex\tOct\tBin\n%d\t%x\t%o\t%b\n\", $NUM, $NUM, $NUM, $NUM);"

Inexpensive substitute for EXPENSIVE calculators

[zealotasd]

I have some friends that have had their calculators stolen countless times. HP is expensive hardware in the hands of often-frugal hackers as the people I know. Many of the mathematics teachers "require" the HP (expensive) calculators just to enter their class. It's tough for some of us students that are poor. Some students pull a fast-one by going to Radio Shack and buying the nice (albeit inexpensive) calculator which *appears* to have the same features as an HP graphing calculator. In a student's experience, they will often be shunned and frowned upon by their teacher for not buying an HP brand graphing calculator. I suppose in a teacher's view, the teacher doesn't want any hassles with incompatible calculators in their HP-only classroom. HP and said teachers are simply monopolizing a product onto students.

The calculator isn't important, it just automates a calculation and gets you away from paper to display the result. Sure, it makes everything faster, but what do you say to someone who simply understands the order of operations to solve an equation without a calculator? Plot the points! The better rebuttal to using graphing calculators would be is to criticize upon the fact that it is best to know howto solve a mathematics equation without a graphics calculator. Say, if you were shipped-off to planet Deimos, thrown in the brig for punching your commanding officer, they take your gun and girly HP graphics calculator, and then monsters from hell invade from the interdimentional portal killing everyone and you are only left with your wits... You will not have a graphics calculator salesman to sell you somthing, so let's learn howto use the computer between our head...and the blood of your commanding officer to plot the points of a graph on the wall. Back to alleged "Teachers", I've witnessed teachers giving ultimatums to students which don't have the "required" calculator. It's tough to not be prejudice towards teachers, they only know a limited number of graphics calculators/brands. And besidse, they're being payed to teach so that makes them less of a teacher and more of a mercenary. The more briliant students (like me, and countless other nerds with their ears puckered-out) need to strive to hack around these HP-fascists. The next best step to not purchasing a HP calculator is...to not purchase an HP calculator: buy an inexpensive PDA, preferably a Vtech Helio (~$30 on eBay, can run Linux with a hack) or a Agenda VR3 / Softfield Tech VR3 (~$70 on eBay, alreadly runs Linux/X11), or a Netpliace I-Opener (~$50 on eBay, can linux with a hack). Run Tiemu on the Linux-based PDA of your choice, it emulats many different HP graphics calculator consoles and operations).

Boycott HP and their union teacher monopolizing overlords!

Re:RPN

[HarveyBirdman]

Shut the fuck up.

Wow. I never realized my typing was that loud.

I bet you only jack off to the plastic girls of PLAYBOY instead of the more realistic looking girls of SWANK.

Bah. I'm far beyond those amateur rags. I'm deep into fetish territory at this point. The only place I have left to go is, I dunno, Satan worship or heroin addiction or something.

Now, you shall be silent, fool mortal, and worship at the altar of RPN.

Interesting.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Never ran into that flavor before.

Ugh, decimal .

[Thinkit3]

Wouldn't it be more elegant to have everything in hexadecimal?

The Calculator Shift

[cagle_.25]

I've been teaching AP Calculus for 11 years, and I've seen the same kinds of changes on the Calculus exam. There are two types of questions on the "calculator allowed" sections of the exam: the questions where the numbers are so obviously complicated that you *have* to use a calculator, and the questions which are entirely symbolic.

Is the change to calculators good or bad? A little of both. On the one hand, GCs have allowed me to teach limits and tangent-line estimations much more effectively. On the other hand, students' algebra skills have suffered. In particular, there has been an improvement in students' abilities to deal with decimals and a decline in students' abilities to deal with fractions, both numeric and algebraic. Good? Bad? It's just different. But I find myself doing a lot more reteaching of algebra these days...

As an aside to the HP-bashers above, the real reason that TI's market share is higher is that the AP Exams are particularly friendly to the capabilities of the TIs. Accident or marketing ploy? We may never know.

Jeff Cagle

If you ask me...

[UnixRevolution]

and you didn't, TI calcs are overpriced and underpowered, compared to other technology on the market. Palms run 133mhz processors for 100 bucks, so why does TI still use only 16's? MORE POWER NEEDED! especially for the prime factorization program i found for my '83.

Re: Pure math?

[jabberjaw]

From what I gather computers can help. I am not a pure math major, however from what I gather Hales used a computer program to prove by exhaustion Kepler's Conjecture. While Hales did not use a pocket calculator, he did use a machine to perform the proof, no?

Good ole HP 48G

[ducomputergeek]

My HP 48G is almost 10 years old. It still does more than I need it too and it only has 32k of ram. Hell it was good enough to send us to the moon, it's good enough to add, subtract, multiply, and solve stress equations on the fly...

Re:Good ole HP 48G

[sciencewhiz]

Nope. Nobody's HP calculator sent us to the moon (at least not for the first missions). It was slide rules with 2 decimal places of accuracy (or three if you had a big one and were very good) that got us to the moon.

not competitive!?

[SHEENmaster]

My shiny HP 49g+ has a faster processor (75mhz), more storage (256M), 131 x 80 resolution (smaller fonts more than compensate).

The 256M SD card can be used with my Linux(usb) and Solaris(pcmcia) systems, and IrDA allows for traditional linking with Linux. It also open up the possibility of printing to an IrDA printer, like the ones my school was conned into buying.

The 49g+ can do realtime rotations in fast3d mode, while the 89's similar feature has a much slower framerate.

To top this all off, the 49g+ can be used in algebraic mode. The only features the 89 has on it are a slightly better resolution and a better symbolic solver.

Why a PDA???

[AtOMiCNebula]

The main reason is because PDAs can do way more than graphing calculator stuff. Sure, this sounds great in theory, but it's a humongous problem. Sure, you can watch movies, listen to music, but they can also let you read text files (just downloaded all the SAT/ACT answers from the internet? no problem.), wireless capabilities (check answers with someone across the room or in the next room over), or in math's case, so serious mathematical equation manipulation.

It's the reason TI-89/92/V200/PDAs, or anything with a QWERTY keyboard are banned from any standardized test. It's just to easy to cheat. With a TI-83/84 calculator, the test takers know exactly what you can do and not do with it, as opposed to a PDA, which you can just download a program that'll do anything you want.

Test administrators just don't have enough time to be checking everyone's PDA for stuff that shouldn't be there. It's just easier when they can simply check what calculator they have, and know it's ok. So, unless you find a PDA that can natively do graphing calculator stuff (odds are they'd want to purge your entire PDA's HD, except for the OS, to ensure nothing that would let you cheat is on there), I doubt PDAs will ever be allowed in standardized test situations.

Not to mention, PDAs are banned/discouraged in many high schools, yet graphing calculators are not. Calculators can't take pictures, be used as phones, wireless chat, and play music, can they?

It's actually pretty simple why you shouldn't use a PDA with graphing calculator software unless you're never going to be using it in a testing situation, ever.

Re:Why a PDA???

[ottothecow]

Why do people bring up the qwerty keyboard thing (and the 89 does not have qwerty)? i've read it even on tests that qwerty calculators were banned but the 83+ has a key for every letter and you could easily store answers (hint, store them as a program). I know people who can enter data quite fast on a phone and that only has a third of the neccessary keys.

Would someone just give me a good reason why there are tests where the 92+ is banned but the 89 is legitimate (same calculator). Another question would be...why did I see TI-83's (not plus) selling for almost the price of a plus model a few months ago? They are much less complex than the 83+ and even the 83+ is extrememly overpriced. There be a market for releasing a competing graphing calculator with the 83 series for around $50 new if you could get around the fact that high schools routinely say that all students are required to have an 83/83+.

Re:Why a PDA???

[mark-t]

Would someone just give me a good reason why there are tests where the 92+ is banned but the 89 is legitimate (same calculator).

It's not. At best, the 89 is easier to sneak into tests because it looks just like the 86.

Re:Why a PDA???

[ottothecow]

The TI-89 is allowed for use on the AP Calculus, AP Statistics, AP Physics, AP Chemistry, PSAT/NMSQT, SAT I, SAT II Math IC & IIC

I remeber reading the book when I took the PSAT/NMSQT and the 89 is in fact allowed. For tests like the sat/act, having an 89 isnt a big deal becasue you dont need the advanced functions, any scientific calculator should get through the test. For the higher tests, if its the tool you have been using when you learned the material and you will have available when you need to apply it, it makes sense that you should be able to use it on the test. The AP physics test for example tests more on concept/formula basis, your ability to do the math (which isnt all that advanced most of the time) is not the focus. If it is important enough, they could make calculators be cleared before use but I know a lot of people who wouldnt be happy clearing off their custom programs

Re:Why a PDA???

[Hadlock]

This is the reasoning at Univ. Texas @ Arlington, according to my calc prof:

"The TI-92 is a great calculator, I think everyone should have one, and even better is the TI-89, my cousin picked one up on eBay for $75 a couple months ago.... but you can't use a TI-92 on tests. Why? I get that alot, so I'll awnser the question for you now; it uses a QWERTY keyboard. (goes into a speech about how graphing calcs are computers...) ...And if we started letting people use TI-92s in class, eventually someone would come in and use their laptop as a calculator, probably running Matlab or Maple, which wouldn't be fair to anyone else, and would essentially be cheating. Besides, if you're doing any sort of real engineering class, you're going to need a TI-89 anyways, so you might as well save a couple of bucks and get the better calculator that I'll let you use on tests."

Re: Pure math?

[Skavookie]

Yes, some theorems can be proved by exhaustion with the help of a computer, but they are something of an exception, and such proofs are not considered terribly satisfactory, as the MathWorld article you refered to points out with regard to Hales' proof of Kepler's Conjecture. It's like 'proving' that 7*6=42 by having a computer compute 7*6 (admittedly I'm exagerating here, but it shows my point). Also, I would consider the code for the program he ran to be the real proof, and that was produced by a person, not a computer. Of course, strong AI would make all this a moot point.

BTW, kudos on the MathWorld reference ;)

Busted LCDs with Ti Calculators-

[purduephotog]

With their newest versions I've really got to hope they've improved the quality of their LCDs. I've personally owned 5 Ti-85's (*FIVE* at at least 90$ a pop) and every single one of them had to be pitched due to the LCD dying.

To a kid in HS that was a hell of alot of change to throw away because Ti wouldn't cover the replacement. Not When I got to college and the next one was dying (someone stole it from me, thus saving me the sad time of trying to read thru broken lines) and the 3rd one died..... then the 4th died.... bought the last one my last year in college (2 HS, 3 college) which, upon turning it on this year, was discovered to have 3 functioning LCD lines.

Needless to say.... I still use my little casio because I can still read the numbers.

Re:Busted LCDs with Ti Calculators-

[toddestan]

I've seen many older TI's with good, still functioning screens. Keyboards seem to cause the biggest problem, it seems they just get gunk in them and start to stick - but I've fixed that by taking the calculator apart and cleaning the keyboard. The other problem with the 85 is eventually you get all kinds of dust between the LCD and the plastic window. Also can be solved by taking it apart and cleaning it. My 85 is 8 years old, seen all kinds of use/abuse, and still works great. With the newer TI's though, it seems they get cracked LCD's easy when they get dropped.

Re:Busted LCDs with Ti Calculators-

[purduephotog]

Don't get me wrong- I don't misuse/abuse them. The screens just die. I guess I"ll pop this one apart and see if I can't clean the contacts.... heck, its useless as it is.

Thanks for the advice- didn't actually think about disassembling it for some reason.

Re:Busted LCDs with Ti Calculators-

[toddestan]

If you do take it apart, you'll find the LCD is attached to the mainboard by a largish ribbon cable. This is the most fragile part of the insides of the calculator. If you jiggle the ribbon cable around it can sometimes fix bad lines, but it can also make it worse (though in your case it won't make much difference). Tracking down the actual bad connection is nearly impossible though.

Re: Pure math?

[jabberjaw]

Yes you are true. My main point was that machines can assist even those who study the pure maths. They are a tool to be utilized, not a "magic" box which produces proofs. Utilized well, as Hales has shown, they can produce amazing results.

Sometimes

[Fjord]

Sometimes, I begin to think "this site isn't news for nerds." Then an article like this is posted.

Keep loving it, it's still the top of the line.

[cgenman]

There must be some room somewhere for an enterprising company to come in with a (gasp) color calculator, or one with more than 200k of RAM.

The TI-92 was top-of-the-line nearly 8 years ago... Color would make graphing multiple functions a joy instead of a chore, and 3D graphing of the type done by the calculators should be trivial by now. I know the 68000 is one of the most revered processors out there, but it is over 20 years old. The GBA beats the TI-92 hands down on screen, memory, processor speed... Add in Ti's proprietary math processors and you would have a beast to be reckoned with.

The Calculator industry used to be a vibrant area of change and advancement. What happened, Did TI just win the wars and then get complacent?

Re:Keep loving it, it's still the top of the line.

[yeremein]

I agree with you about TI's complacency. I'm sure TI makes a tidy profit on their calculators by now, seeing as how their calculator prices have never gone down, and nothing innovative has emerged since the TI 89/92+ in 1998 (which are the same calculator in a different form factor).

One would think they could afford to put in useful upgrades, such as an order of magnitude more RAM or a faster processor (IMHO, 10MHz is laughable these days, even for a graphing calculator).

Then again, perhaps TI sticks with the low-res black-only LCDs, slow processors, and miniscule amounts of RAM to limit power consumption. My TI-89 lasts weeks or months on a set of batteries--you won't get that from a PDA.

Re:Keep loving it, it's still the top of the line.

[CrowScape]

I had a CASIO graphing calculator that was in color. The thing ran through batteries like you wouldn't believe, however, so I ditched it and went with an HP 48G. Color just wasn't worth having my calculator crap out on me in the middle of a test.

Terrible Screen

[pottymouth]

I've had a TI 85 for years but the screen just stinks. It's very low res and hard to see. I end up using my TI 68 (a sweet little Scientific calculater) for everything I don't need graphing for. The screen on the new TI 89 doesn't look much better though. Why the heck don't they get something color and hi-res? These things aren't exactly cheap. Why not give us our money's worth...

No one has mentioned this

[generationxyu]

Why not a V200? 'Cause you can use it on the SAT.

In all my math classes in high school, you were allowed to use any TI handheld calculator you wanted (read:no 92/+) (except for no-calculator exams, which are beside the point). They didn't trust HPs or Casios, and they certainly didn't trust a PDA.

And with good reason. TI still doesn't offer wireless links. RF links are not very difficult to make, but they're bulky and obvious. It's much harder to cheat on tests with a TI than with a calculator that has an IR link, however crappy it is.

And need I remind you... 3x the Flash means 2.7 megs... uClinux... seems like an obvious decision...

Plus, only calculator dorks care, but USB is huge. That makes a big difference in connectivity. The fact that includes a PC link is amazing. Previously TI Graph-Links cost about $20, and they only recently made a USB one.

As for the TI-84, I don't give a damn about Z80 calcs anymore.

Re:What happened to the TI-85?

[toddestan]

TI seems to be killing off the 85/86 line. I think TI sees the 83 and it's variants as the line for high school, and the 89 and it's kin as the line for college. In their view, the 85/86 just don't have a place.

But I agree, the 85 is the best TI. I always viewed the 82 as a crippled 85 rather than an upgraded 81 - since the 85 predates the 82. Now the 82 has gone through several revisions and it still lacks many of the 85's features. And these features are ones I find more useful (like polynomial solver, complex numbers, and the larger screen) - as opposed to all the ones the 82/83/84 line has picked up (1.5MB of flash rom? WTF?)

This reminds me...

[mujin]

I wrote a program on my friend's calculator (a TI-83 Plus) to add 1 to all answers over 50. That really messed him up on his homework.

mode 7?

[tepples]

TI doesn't have Mode 7.

Without Mode 7, you can't play Tetanus On Drugs.

Except there's an RPN interface for the TI-89.

[Jim Haskell]

http://www.paxm.org/symbulator/download/rpn.html . I've used this for well over 4 years.

No.

[jared_hanson]

No. No. A thousand times no. There is beauty in diversity.

Re:Yea. New boring expensive calculators!

[Nynaeve]

Considering that it is your knowledge they are testing and not your imagination...I'd say yes.
You might be able to argue 1+1=3 in a philosophy class, but forget it on the SAT.