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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?"
I use a TI89. It's about as good as you're going to get without it not being allowed on tests, etc.
There is just something fundamentally appealing to owning a powerful calculator 90% of the population can't even add two numbers on...
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
The TI-89 is *mediocre* with drawing graphs, as you indicated. However, if you are going to study more science, it can do symbolic manipulation that you might only expect in a program like Maple or mathematica. If you are feeling dimwitted and can't work out an integral or maybe if you can't figure out if a particular algebraic equation has a solution then you can ask this device. It has more advanced features that I haven't used but if you tinker with it you'll get alot of use out of it. Also, as far as the graph drawing goes, I think they have a TI-92 that does better with those.
My friend's father's HP48 was in a briefcase which was left behind during evacuation of the world trade center, somewhere around the 70th floor. 6 months after 9/11, FBI called him up (the evacuated father who made it out) and said "we need you to come down and identify a few items" briefcase made it through with lots of things trashed inside, mostly crushed... but the HP was still working just fine.
strong statement as to their durability.
to email me: take my
I love my HP48GX. and once you grok RPN, there truly is no going back. so much easier for huge long formula calculations
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
You obviously aren't familiar with the AP tests. No PDAs allowed, only graphing calculators.
.866, but the TI-89 can also give you rad(3)/2. It also has standard stuff like constants, unit conversions, and ability to write your own programs which may or may not be useful to you. On the whole it's very useful and I can't think of anything more that I would want from my graphing calculator. These days they have some silver/platinum crap which draws graphs faster and has more memory for programs; I'd go with that.
Personally, I think the TI-89 is the best graphing calculator you can get. It's got very helpful algebraic functions that solve equations, factor polynomials, etc. It even does indefinite integration and differentiation of functions (very useful for checking your work when you take calculus, the TI-83 does no such thing). Everything looks nice and shows up just like you would write the algebra, so data entry is much easier. Previous calculations are stored in memory and you can just scroll up and select an answer or the calculation, and it will show up in the entry line. Very useful for complex calculations. It has the capability to display exact values, ie for cos(30) most calculators will give you
To be honest, you only really need a calculator until you leave high school. Getting anything fancier than a TI-89 is a waste of money. In college, a simple scientific calculator will suffice for lower division classes. If you go into engineering you will be doing serious math by hand and serious calculations by computer (MATLAB or FORTRAN). No more "graphing" in the sense of the primitive capabilities of graphing calculators. Once you've learned about all the things they can do, you move onto more complex functions and calculations, more complex data sets, and you just don't need to use a calculator to figure out what y = x^2 looks like. I imagine science and mathematics is the same, except maybe with Maple or something.
I would second a TI-89, if your teacher allows you to use it on exams. I had one for calc in high school, used it on the AP test and all my calc exams, and it makes things much easier. It is almost cheating, though, since it does symbolic differetiation/integration. Now that I'm in college, the professors won't let us use an 89 on the tests, but it's still nice when you want to check your answers for homework.
I absolutely agree. The HP48GX is an amazing calculator. Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) rocks...you don't need to enter in brackets with complex expressions which probably makes it 20-30% faster than other methods. The calculator uses a stack system for its calculations. To add 2 and 3, type 2 and hit enter to put it into the stack. Then press 3 and hit enter...3 also appears on the stack. Then press +. This adds the bottom two entries in the stack. With complex expressions, you start on the innermost brackets and work outwards. Because your answers are always visible in the stack, it is remarkably easy to evaluate expressions without ever rounding more than the calculator's precision.
The stack doesn't just work for numbers. It is possible to enter in many types of objects. Enter two matrices or vectors into the stack, then press +, -, x, or / and the calculator will add, subtract, multiply, or divide the two matrices, just as if they were two numbers. To find the inverse matrix, enter it into the stack and press (1/x). Complex numbers are easily handled by entering them as vectors.
The main weakness of my version is that it is a bit slow when doing things like graphing. The origin of this problem lies in HP's neglect of this product. HP used to be a highly innovative and inventive technology company. They made products that no one else imagined making, things that were designed to meet the requirements of technical professionals like engineers. Then the bean counters/MBA's took over. They sold off most of HP's innovative divisions (Agilent Technologies for example) and became primarily a maker of bog standard PC's. They stopped making the 48GX for a while, but brought it back after a loud outcry. The new version was however not quite the same as the old version. It feels cheaper than the older calculators...it doesn't quite have the same solid feel. Bloody corporate bean counters! HP has been losing money for much of the time since they took over.
It is a shame that HP hasn't updated this calculator. With a newer processor, and a few interface updates, this could truly be the ultimate calculation tool. It is still great, but if it were a bit faster with a more polished interface, then it would be perfect.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I must disagree with the parent on using the TI-89 in college. I am a junior in electrical engineering, and I use it all the time. While it is true that we use MATLAB for several classes, when it comes to test time, we aren't allowed to use computers. The TI-89 has definately helped me a lot in these classes, and on long 13+ hour assignments, it is extreemly helpful to simply let the calculator do the basic integrations and differentiations. That said, my personal advice would be to go with the TI-89. It is robust, very common, and with features like symbolic integration, amazingly useful.