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TI-84 Plus Released
clear issue writes "The TI-84 Plus has now been shipped, and is avalible through a few distributors. (Try froogle) Besides the new stylish interface, when compared to the 83+, the 84+ has a number of technical advancements including a 2.5 times faster processor speed. To see how this new device compares to your current calculator, check out ti's comparison pdf chart. TI has even dedicated an entire web site for the promotion of the 84 Plus."
Kids in HS have tons more work to do than I did even in the 1990s. Calculators are tools they are not crutches. Why should you *need* to know how to do stuff manually when there is a tool to do it for you?
Ugh. For the Nth time, you can't use a Palm on an exam. Plus, using a stylus on a calculator is like using a wooden spoon to do open heart surgery.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
This comment was copied and pasted from the article about the new HP calculator...
MY SECRET DIARIES
I hated my HP49 so much that I recently bought myself a brand new TI-89. I do not agree with your recommendation at all. The HP49 is slow and bloated. And compared to the TI-89, it's screen is awfull, to say the least.
While you might light having everything integrated into your handheld, there is no denying that a dedicated calculator is prefered by a lot of people. I personally would have more confidence in my calculator with button pushing than screen tapping. Tapping the screen just doesn't work as well and is definately prone to error. Don't even get me started on giving handheld devices to kids in middle school. Battery life is also terrible. The list goes on and on, so I hope you get the point.
Your reference to HP is a bit uncalled for since TI owns most of the graphing calculator business. It's definately not in TI's best interest for everything to go handheld since they don't have handhelds waiting in the wings.
Before I begin this rant, I should mention that Texas Instruments does not actually make these things anymore. They sold off their calculator division long ago. Hence these things are TI's, not Texas Instrument calculators.
The company that does make them makes a good deal of their total revenue of these things. And in order to keep this revenue coming in, they have made themselves the official Calculator of Calculus (TM). Every major textbook is geared for this calculator, and even the AP exam requires it (or something very much like it) these days. I get students in Calculus straight out of high school who ask me to tell them what the "official calculator for the course" is.
Now, there are some really useful things you can do with a calculator in a Calculus class. The problem is 90% of all high school calculus teachers are not trained enough to use them properly. And using them improperly is worse than not using them at all.
I use to be head proctor for the placement exams for the Engineering school at Cornell. The year calculators were added to the Calculus AP, we saw a statistically significant drop in scores. However, when I complain about these problems, I get called a technophobe.
God, how I hate these things.
I always preferred the 85/86 to the 83/82. The "UI" of the 85/86 is just... better. The buttons are organized the way they should be, and not grouped according to if you're doing your taxes or not.
:D
What about those ones? According to ticalc.org, they're the "engineering" oriented calculators, maybe that explains the above paragraph...
Then there was also the 92/89 pair, but that always seemed a bit silly... I don't need to have 3d graphics, thank you
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Am I the only one that is disgusted by all these "Need to Convince Mom and Dad?" buttons (see bottom left) that are popping up everywhere?
I mean, how long before companies begin to advise children to cry out loud and shout that their parents don't love them if they don't want to buy them their product?
Yeah, it's a bit offtopic. I know.
I like having my calculator batteries last for months, if not years, on end. My ancient TI-85 is always near, always ready.
Plus, the input area on a TI calculator is much larger than even the screen on a PDA, which has to display both the input interface and the results.
Hardcoded keys are fantastic for memorizing quick patterns. Would you try to replace a computer keyboard with a few square inches of touch-sensitive LCD and a stylus?
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Well, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, it helps you work faster... the guy/girl who can do sin(0) in their head will inevitably finish a test faster, and hence have more time to check his/her work, than the guy/girl who has to punch it into a calculator, meaning better grades. And that ignores the benefits of actually *using your brain*...
Frankly, I don't understand how you can defend the idea of needing to punch sin(0) into your calculator. I mean, honestly, if that isn't a symptom of the tool being used as a crutch, I don't know what is. How far does it need to go before you'll admit that the tool is being misused? Hey, maybe we should give calculators to the really young and screw teaching them how to add. After all, they've got *so much work* these days, why should they have to do it themselves when there's a tool to do it for them?
And as for the idea that school is somehow harder these days, I'd love to see proof of that. I'll guarantee you that the curriculum in school hasn't changed much in the last ten years, if anything, because such things just move slowly (changing curriculum is not a trivial operation).
Nah ... seems like too much trouble for the bully. Why wouldn't he just beat up the smart kid and take his calculator, complete with answers?
Luckily the one thing the bully can't take from you is your intelligence. In my experience, the tough kids usually don't care much about grades anyway . . . until they end up driving a beer truck or sweeping up at the car dealership. Har!
And I'm sure he wrote a little function where you enter volume of the container, pump horsepower, etc and it spits out the answer. That's what should be taught. Things like that make it easier, but solving the function makes more work. The three virtues of programmers are laziness, impatience, and hubris. Math teaches diligence, thoroughness, and humility. They are inherently incompatible.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
The point is, if you don't know why the sin of 0 is 0, then it doesn't matter whether you got the answer right or not. I can understand not wanting to do derivatives and integrals -- but if you don't want to learn how to do them, why bother doing them at all? Calculus isn't required for IT degrees, at least not where I study, and if it is required, it's because someone who's probably a whole lot smarter thinks there's a good reason for it.
I find calculus in many things outside a calculus classroom -- just because you don't use it in your job doesn't mean it's useless. Calculus is a way of thinking more than just a problem/solution kind of math -- learning how to do those derivatives and integrals teaches you how to think better than anything else I know of. And those engineers -- you may be right that they do them with computers and calculators all the time, but that doesn't mean they don't need to understand what the computer is doing to solve the problems. If you don't understand how to set up the problem correctly, the computer can't give you the right answer.
I do not read or respond to AC's. If you want a discussion, log in. Otherwise, don't waste your time.
As I noticed: I wasn't too good at algebra until I applied it to geometry. I wasn't too good at geometry until I applied it to calculus. I was okay in calculus but differential equations really solidified it. Algebra, "odd" factoring, etc. is useful and very very solid for me now. So learning more math helps you solidify what you already have. That's a good thing.
And while most problems in the real world are just "type it in and get the answer", there's always something that the computer doesn't know how to do. The example I cite is solving high order Cauchy-Euler differential equations. The TI89 can't do it. However, I know a simple substitution that turns it into a high order constant-coefficients problem. That you may solve by finding roots of a polynomial (which the calculator can do fine). Knowing how to do what the calculator is doing is always a good thing.
My other car is first.
Yeah, yeah, whatever. Real engineers hardly ever use calculators, considering there are things like Matlab around.