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The Best Graphing Calculator on the Market?
aaronbeekay asks: "I'm a sophomore in high school taking an honors chem course. I'm being forced to buy something handheld for a calculator (I've been using Qalculate! and GraphMonkey on my Thinkpad until now). I see people all around me with TIs and think 'there could be something so much better'. The low-res, monochrome display just isn't appealing to me for $100-150, and I'd like for it to last through college. Is there something I can use close to the same price range with better screen, more usable, and more powerful? Which high-tech calculators do you guys use?"
Do they make advanced graphing-calculator-like apps for them?
Especially when the HP48GX is the clear winner... /me ducks
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
No question that the HP 48G is the one to get if you want something that will last. TI's or the Carly era HP's aren't as durable by a long shot. I have a small collection of HP's that has some models that date back to the 80's, and they all work quite well despite being 25 years old. One of the models I have is the 41cx which is distinguished for being carried on the early space shuttle missions for use to supplement the on-board computers.
If you do get a 48GX do be careful protecting the screen. The carrying case doesn't provide enough protection - I lost one because of that.
You'll need it or a desktop for many things, but not for taking notes. A paper notebook and a pen or pencil are all you'll need for taking notes. Why? Note-taking isn't outlining, which is what most people think. Note-taking is a mnemonic system. It is not transcription. Someone good at note-taking will make small sketches, use arrows, circle items, use abbreviations, and skip items of little relevance. Properly used, note-taking can act like a filter, preserving the things you think you'll need to remember from the lecture, while skipping those irrelevancies every lecture has. There is one final, absolute advantage to note-taking over laptop transcription (or taping the lecture, another rookie mistake): your focus will be on what's said in class, not on fiddling with your laptop.
For anyone who is planning to be a physical scientist or an engineer, a powerful calculator is a handicap and will hurt you in the long run. The ease of solving problems in low level math courses will come to haunt you when you take a course that includes something like Laplace transforms or complex analysis.
... period. As far as being haunted in higher level courses, try numerical analysis sometime. As a student in that class, I had to write programs to solve differential equations, do numerical differentiation/integration, calculate eigenvalues/eigenvectors, and so on.
Spoken like someone who doesn't know how calculators are intended to be used. As I have told many a math student in my classes, calculators are no substitute for understanding how to work a problem. They are labor saving devices
It's about the computing power in your head, not on the calculator. With RPN, once you're used to it, you actually have to carry less state around, and it's easier to enter things properly and quickly. You just have to get used to thinking in what seems like a very funny way to start with.
Classic HP 15C. Graphing is for sissies. Best form factor ever (sideways, punch with both thumbs)
Maybe a 48SX if you really need graphing.
RPN forever!!!
If you are that narrow minded, please don't teach that class. It's detrimental to your students.
The TI-89 can do anything taught in a math course well into a 300 level course, possibly four hundred.
And a trained human can do anything taught in any math course. To effectively use the TI-89, you have to (a) understand the problem, (b) know how to translate it into a form manageable by the calculator, and (c) enter the problem in such a manner that a meaningful result is produced.
Punching the equation into the calculator and getting an answer *even if it is only a small part of the actual problem* reduces drastically your ability to spot an error in any given step in a larger calculation.
Absolutely. But guess what? Nearly ANY institution that relies on computers does exactly this, every day. Do you really believe that there are paper audits of every computation involving every bit of datum used by NASA, Microsoft, AT&T, the NSA, etc., and that those audits are actually examined for errors?
So, restated: knowing how to work a problem is not enough. If you are teaching your students that it is, I believe that you are doing them a major disservice. Being so familiar with the problem that one can spot a mistake right in the middle of it, while focused on actually solving the problem, with nothing more than a pencil and basic scientific calculator at hand.. that is knowing enough.
A couple of points here:
1) Familiarity with a problem is a luxury that sharp undergraduates may enjoy. But, in the real world, there isn't a great demand for people to solve mathematical problems that have already been solved --- those problems can be repeatedly solved by computers.
2) You tacitly assume that students/graduates know how to use a calculator to solve the problem. In my experience, this is rarely the case. I won't elaborate on this except to say that until you've taken a course in numerical analysis, you really don't know how use a calculator.
Nonsense; I upgraded from the TI-83 to the TI-89 and never looked back. The 83/84 series are underpowered calculators that lack a computer algebra system which severely limits their effectiveness. Further, for any type of complex function the display on the 83 is going to be extremely difficult to read while the 89 will render it in a format closer to how you would write it down on paper. For me, the 89 meant freedom from the mindless tedium of simply algebra and is a wonderful replacement for integral tables. I believe quite strongly that there is no glory in solving a problem a device could solve for you. If you already have mastered an integral or solving an algebraic equation, it's time to turn those functions over to a calculator so you can focus on bigger problems. The calculator isn't much harder than any of the others and the learning curve is going to be about the same if you're not already familiar with a TI calculator. The advice that you buy the less worthy 83/84 because "everyone is doing it" or the 89 is "too hard" is bad advice. Make an investment (both of money and of learning time) in the powerful 89 which will end up serving you far better in the long run.