TI-84+C-Silver Edition: That C Stands For Color

Ti-84 by sheehaje · 2012-12-19 17:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

Seen the ti-84 mentioned a lot lately... The only thing I remember was I could program it, and my professor let me for my Calculus 1 class. I still don't know a lot about Calculus, but I know more about programming... Makes me think if calculators are good for learning the subject, or for learning how to program the subject.

Re:Ti-84 by chronokitsune3233 · 2012-12-19 22:24 · Score: 1

Programming the subject? Of course! My teacher actually spent half of the class time on a couple of occasions just showing programs to add by hand for the midpoint/rectangle rule, the trapezoidal rule and Simpson's rule for computing the area under a curve on our TI-83+/TI-84+ graphing calculators. I already had these done, so while everybody was asking "Where's the For?" and "Why is this not working?" I was playing PuzzPack, which is still fun of course.

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Re:Ti-84 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 00:10 · Score: 0

Why learn math?
http://cheezburger.com/6891071232
Re:Ti-84 by bmo · 2012-12-20 00:43 · Score: 2

>The only thing I remember was I could program it, and my professor let me for my Calculus 1 class. I still don't know a lot about Calculus, but I know more about programming...
Actually, you know more about calculus than you think you do. In order to write a program, you must understand what the algorithm does that you're using.
That is if you wrote the program from scratch instead of simply plugging things in from a cookbook.
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BMO
Re:Ti-84 by vlm · 2012-12-20 01:13 · Score: 3, Interesting

Actually, you know more about calculus than you think you do. In order to write a program, you must understand what the algorithm does that you're using.
Unfortunately, the algorithms I used on my TI-81 were more like, "crude text adventure parser" (stereotypical DnD dungeon) "parametric equation of a side view of a boob" (boys will be boys) and in later years when I had a HP-48 I wrote a pretty decent 68hc11 simulator using an array as memory and variables as the registers. Welcome to state machines! The '48 had pretty good hex math capabilities and I never implemented the whole instruction set, but I certainly had the basic load, store, add, branch type stuff and a crude debugger UI that could show contents of registers and memory and single step etc. My microcontroller instuctor was somewhat impressed. Also in high school I did learn a fair amount of trig on my own as I finally got a working 3d cube render-er which was a pretty stereotypical 80s home computer BASIC challenge. Basically you store the 3-d cube as an array of the corners coordinates and then plot them ignoring the Z coord, then execute a transform on all the points (there are several ways to implement this), replot, run the transform, replot, you end up with a little controllable rotating cube. Without double (triple?) buffering the flashing as it redraws is almost unbearable and you have to have a strategy to depend with floating point rounding (like not rotating the existing cube by 1 degree each time, you rotate a unit cube by a continuously varying angle (like 41 degrees X rotation this time, 42 the next etc). Its quite slow on a TI-81 but watchable and interesting from a demo-scene perspective.
I learned calc in my senior year of HS anyway, but it was much more despite having a graphing calc than because I had a graphing calc.
So this is what kids do with their "valuable educational math tools" instead of whatever curriculum the PR firm releases. Its more or less the college prep kids equivalent of when the shop kids make bongs in class instead of birdfeeders.

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"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Re:Ti-84 by bmo · 2012-12-20 02:25 · Score: 1

I grew up with a TI-99/4a (world's slowest BASIC interpreter) so my experience is similar to yours I guess, though I didn't get as far as implementing a 6800 simulator in a '48 (I actually learned how to program one by burning UVEPROMs later).
I guess my POV is skewed because the programming tools for math in HS were more primitive and the most advanced TI calcs were versions of the 30 and my most advanced calculator is a HP48 ( the real reason I like it is because I can scroll the stack easier and algebraic calcs suck).
Someone else mentioned in the thread that he took calc classes that disallowed calculators and depended a lot less on getting numeric answers and more on the logic behind it. This is the future.
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BMO
Re:Ti-84 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 11:08 · Score: 0

Spoken like a true secondary school dropout. I got the crap hassled out of me because I had a *slightly* better calculator than everyone else, who had ye olde fx-82
Like BMO i learned calculus by attempting to 'cheat' with my PB-100...trouble was, by the time I had figured out the algorithm involved and programmed it in, I had learned the material and never even took a calculator into exams.
So to summarise, fuck you moron.
Re:Ti-84 by 0100010001010011 · 2012-12-20 15:01 · Score: 1

I programmed my TI-89 into a mini version of SAS/MiniTab. Trying to figure out how to do that in TI-BASIC definitely made me learn the material.

When I was growing up by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 17:45 · Score: 1

Electronic calculators arrived which had monochrome red LED digits, and cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $400. Or you could get a slide rule.

Now get off my lawn.

Re:When I was growing up by sheehaje · 2012-12-19 18:02 · Score: 1

I bet there is an algorithm out there that will calculate what the density is of the blades of grass, how many feet you need to step, and somewhere throw in velocity, and you have the perfect get of your lawn app for the TI-84....
Re:When I was growing up by hb253 · 2012-12-20 05:09 · Score: 1

I remember my TI-58. These kids with their newfangled TI-83's amuse me.
Now get off my lawn.

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Forgetting something? by diamondmagic · 2012-12-19 17:54 · Score: 3, Insightful

"Educators simply weren’t asking for them until recently... We don’t want to create technology for technology’s sake"

Translation: "We haven't the slightest clue what the word innovation means or why it's important."

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Re:Forgetting something? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 18:16 · Score: 0

How would it be "innovative" to make calculators have a color display just because everything else does?
Re:Forgetting something? by Gamer_2k4 · 2012-12-19 18:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

"Educators simply weren’t asking for them until recently... We don’t want to create technology for technology’s sake"
Translation: "We haven't the slightest clue what the word innovation means or why it's important."
Innovation is the devil when it comes to this sort of thing. The article made the excellent point that TI calculators are approved for standardized testing due to their readily-known constraints. What's the point of releasing a new model every year when students won't be able to use them on the important things?
Re:Forgetting something? by diamondmagic · 2012-12-19 18:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

Don't get me wrong, I love my TI-89.
But the very-dark-green-on-dark-green is damned impossible to read in anything except exceptionally well lit rooms, and entering functions isn't even half as quick as it could be. Its whole directory/namespace system is uninspired, and reading input/output from functions is bizarre. There's no easy way to get the argument list of a function without consulting the catalog, which forces you to scroll through all its hundreds of functions or so, and even then it's not very informative (the TI-84 is way better at this even). And so on.
Yes, you can have innovation. The whole point of innovation is to make people's lives easier in ways they couldn't have otherwise anticipated.

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Wonder what the public key field is for?
Re:Forgetting something? by jellomizer · 2012-12-19 22:20 · Score: 1

Also what is the point most students are carrieing cellphones that are much faster, and has a better display.
My (old) iPhone is more powerful than the PC's that I used in college with Maple and MatLab on them, we used that software because the calculator just couldn't do it.

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Re:Forgetting something? by Trilkin · 2012-12-19 22:41 · Score: 1

Your totes being a grammer nazi right now.

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Re:Forgetting something? by T-Bone-T · 2012-12-19 22:49 · Score: 1

You didn't have to scroll through the whole thing, just put in the letter it started with. I think. It has been a while but one of my TIs provided a way to skip to a particular part of the catalogue.
Re:Forgetting something? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 23:00 · Score: 0

What's wrong with way better? It's informal usage.

Is much better miles better than way better?
Re:Forgetting something? by tangelogee · 2012-12-20 01:07 · Score: 2

What's wrong with way better? It's informal usage.
Is much better miles better than way better?
greatly so.
Re:Forgetting something? by tangelogee · 2012-12-20 01:09 · Score: 2

because you cannot easily prevent a student from cheating with a phone that has outside access to the internet, messaging, etc. The calculators could not talk to each other (without a blatantly obvious cable).
Re:Forgetting something? by Cwix · 2012-12-20 01:53 · Score: 1

The TI-89 is very different then the rest of the 8x series.
The 89 and its various versions have much more in common with the 9x series (I believe that was just the 92 and 92+)
I had an 83+ and later an 89. I remember I liked a few things about the 83 that the 89 was lacking in. The catalog was one of them, but for the life of me I cannot remember why.

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Re:Forgetting something? by Agripa · 2012-12-20 02:25 · Score: 1

The calculators could not talk to each other (without a blatantly obvious cable).
Maybe the TI ones could not. The HP-48 and similar sure could until HP lowered the sensitivity of the IR receiver and that was easy to restore.
Re:Forgetting something? by tangelogee · 2012-12-20 02:52 · Score: 1

True, but not many people had those, at least when and where I was in school. I was the oddball with a Casio CFX-9850G.
Re:Forgetting something? by omnichad · 2012-12-20 03:59 · Score: 2

Translation: "We can still charge a fortune for old technology as long as nobody asks for anything better"
Re:Forgetting something? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 04:35 · Score: 0

Wut ever, u dum fukker. U need 2 chillax a bit. U r way uptite.
Re:Forgetting something? by tibit · 2012-12-20 04:41 · Score: 1

Wait a minute, are you talking about grade level and college entry standardized testing in the U.S.? That stuff's like 8th grade mental math, why the heck would you need a calculator for it?

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A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Re:Forgetting something? by UnknownSoldier · 2012-12-20 06:26 · Score: 1

Yup, good times when you could program the HP-48 to "learn" the remote control. :-) The sender was good for about 4 - 5 feet IIRC.
I was under the impression the receiver was shortened to increase the battery life. I still don't know if the the reason was technical or political reason (prevent cheating. I believe to restore the sensitivity you needed to replace a resistor and could of swore people's battery's life went done because of it.

Specs, still by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2012-12-19 17:55 · Score: 5, Interesting

A couple years ago I bought an LG Thrive on a prepaid plan - so undiscounted - for about $150 I believe. The phone was not great, but it had 256 megs of useable RAM, a 320x480 color screen, and a 600MHz processor... not to mention the hardware one expects from any smartphone (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS, low-end camera).

So how can TI get away with charging almost that much today for a single-purpose device that doesn't even compare favorably with a low-end smartphone from two years ago? Does it serve as an espresso machine too, or maybe as an electric razor?

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#DeleteChrome

Re:Specs, still by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 17:59 · Score: 1

A couple years ago I bought an LG Thrive on a prepaid plan - so undiscounted - for about $150 I believe. The phone was not great, but it had 256 megs of useable RAM, a 320x480 color screen, and a 600MHz processor... not to mention the hardware one expects from any smartphone (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS, low-end camera).
So how can TI get away with charging almost that much today for a single-purpose device that doesn't even compare favorably with a low-end smartphone from two years ago? Does it serve as an espresso machine too, or maybe as an electric razor?
Nostalgia. Old lonely geeks with no people skills and who haven't updated their machine skills that pine for their youth.
Re:Specs, still by Pseudonym · 2012-12-19 18:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

So how can TI get away with charging almost that much today for a single-purpose device that doesn't even compare favorably with a low-end smartphone from two years ago?
Because designed to be brought into closed-book examinations can't be Internet-enabled general-purpose computers. And they cost so much because they're single-use devices.

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Re:Specs, still by TubeSteak · 2012-12-19 18:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

So how can TI get away with charging almost that much today for a single-purpose device that doesn't even compare favorably with a low-end smartphone from two years ago?

A. Calculators are built to be abused by students and a ruggedized cell phones is pricey
B. TI can charge whatever they want because they're a defacto monopoly. The text books are literally written with how-to sections for TI calculators.
There's the Nspire lineup which has more features and whatnot, but it's still woefully underpowered and underfeatured compared to a smart phone from 5 years ago.

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Re:Specs, still by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 18:31 · Score: 0

A. Calculators are built to be abused by students and a ruggedized cell phones is pricey
Horseshit. The calculators may not have a screen made of thin glass but they are every bit as crappy and fragile as any other $10 consumable piece of plastic with a circuit board in them.
Re:Specs, still by phantomfive · 2012-12-19 18:36 · Score: 4, Informative

So how can TI get away with charging almost that much today for a single-purpose device that doesn't even compare favorably with a low-end smartphone from two years ago?

Because these calculators are allowed to be used during the test at schools. Their lack of functionality is a benefit. If you bring your phone in, you could use it to find other answers. These devices don't even compare favorably to the Palm Pilot1000 from 1996, although those cost $200 more.

In the testing centers at a lot of universities, the proctors know how to erase the ti-85 before you enter the testing center. Or they can loan you one to use for the test.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Specs, still by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 18:42 · Score: 0

It's also the case that while some cell phones have better hardware, nothing compares to a TI calculator for its given purpose. Don't get me wrong, they aren't great, but if you need to make some calculations even using a computer with nice software is often more cumbersome. Why there aren't cheaper alternatives that do the same thing is a good question that I don't know the answer to.
Re:Specs, still by runeghost · 2012-12-19 18:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

RPN. Also, speaking for myself, I far prefer actual buttons to poking at a touchscreen.
Re:Specs, still by phantomfive · 2012-12-19 18:56 · Score: 1

It's also the case that while some cell phones have better hardware, nothing compares to a TI calculator for its given purpose
There are a number of different graphing calculators that do better than the TI series.

And Google or Wolfram Alpha are about as good as any of them for basic calculations.....You're not going to see this on a TI-85.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Specs, still by floodo1 · 2012-12-19 19:21 · Score: 1

the buttons were at least half the reason why hp48g was the one!

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Re:Specs, still by Iskender · 2012-12-19 19:49 · Score: 1

Typing in something like that on a smartphone would be a huge pain though. No one would want to do it. So while it needs a more advanced platform it doesn't really mean smartphones are superior because of it.
A laptop would do better but then you're using a laptop instead of a small device which still has a purpose-built interface.
Re:Specs, still by Firehed · 2012-12-19 20:05 · Score: 2

They cost so much because they're devices that are the only accepted model for school use. If someone made an equivalent and sold it for $50, TI wouldn't drop the price because the equivalent hadn't been certified as acceptable for test-taking.
Of course the whole thing is absurd. Algebraic solvers aside, being able to plug numbers into a calculator is all you'll be doing with one outside of very specific fields. Memorizing formulae is totally unnecessary, although knowing which one to use is important - and a calculator isn't going to solve that (Wikipedia or Google, on the other hand...)
I'm more surprised that there aren't decent graphic calculator apps for smartphones. I get the whole thing with physical buttons (and agree), but the last time I had to actually graph an equation I think I had to use excel or some janky web app because that's not in my day-to-day work so I don't have my old TI-83+ sitting around from high school.

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Re:Specs, still by Firehed · 2012-12-19 20:10 · Score: 3, Interesting

I've never managed to kill a calculator (graphing or otherwise) and it was definitely put through some abuse during high school. I wasn't exactly throwing it against walls, but I wasn't terribly careful about throwing it in a backpack containing thirty pounds of textbooks either. There were a thousand or more of them at the school as every student had one, and I can't once remember overhearing someone complaining about a cracked or otherwise damaged calculator. Yet at least a third of the iPhones I see are cracked in some way (oddly, this doesn't seem to be the case with many Androids, but I see far fewer of them so that might just be selection bias)

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How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Re:Specs, still by Iskender · 2012-12-19 20:35 · Score: 2

So how can TI get away with charging almost that much today for a single-purpose device that doesn't even compare favorably with a low-end smartphone from two years ago? Does it serve as an espresso machine too, or maybe as an electric razor?
The TI doesn't need to and shouldn't get into a feature or spec sheet race. It's a mobile calculator and that's what it should do well. It compares very favourably with a smartphone if we actually consider what it's for.
I haven't had a serious use for my TI since upper secondary school, yet I still prefer it to any option. In more than a decade of owning it I've changed the batteries something like twice. Some smartphones on the other hand need charging twice a week even for standby.
I still have the interface in muscle memory after all these years. A smartphone would have died within this timespan, likely forcing an interface change. You cannot do touchtyping on a smartphone like you can on a TI. There's no way you'll have 30-40 always available hotkeys either.
Basically as long as it's within the budget the TI is superior for these tasks. That's why smartphones won't replace it. But it IS indeed overpriced - as someone else said, it's not known why there isn't competition pulling prices down (I write this assuming similar calculators from other manufacturers have roughly similar prices).
But until the prices fall you need to pay this to get a good device. The options will either be bulky (laptop), or run out of batteries and have worse interfaces. A low cost integrated camera won't get the job done.
Re:Specs, still by whois · 2012-12-19 20:36 · Score: 1

So build a full featured smart pad that has the same wipe capability and wipe them before tests. Possibly automatically through the local network the devices are all required to talk to if they're allowed in the classroom. (With the ability to restore from a network save of course, so the student doesn't loose whatever he saved on it)
Deliberately gimping a product this badly just means the student won't learn valuable skills with it. I've forgotten everything I ever learned about programming TI calculators because once I was out of school I never used one again... but when you think about it, computers are almost universally available and all of that functionality is just a nicely designed web-interface away from everyone. You could even restrict it in a student environment. That would mean that the skills you learned in school carried over to a real world practical use.
All of that is important because in the LONG run, if you're capable of exploiting a computer to get A's in calculus you probably understood the material anyway. The only time this isn't the case is sharing answers, which should still be detectable.
In anything beyond basic math (outside of school) it's assumed you will either estimate* or you'll use a computer to verify your accuracy.
It bothers me to see things not changing with the times just because. I do welcome mostly staying conservative with child education because it's hard to determine if it's safe to change things that can influence a child's growth, but not staying in touch with current technology seems like a miss-step even if it is ultra-conservative.
* I don't think estimation is taught very well in schools. Sure, you get a brief discussion of how it works and a day or two of homework on it, but it's not made clear when it's useful and when it's acceptable to use it. You don't really find out until college that it's okay to ballpark things with rounded numbers as long as you get the formulas right, and that's an important skill for Grocery shopping, Astronomy, most Engineering disciplines and probably lots of other things.
Re:Specs, still by thegarbz · 2012-12-19 20:48 · Score: 2

While I agree with your anecdote, the AC has a point. There's nothing in them to break. The buttons are standard keyboard style PCB traces with a rubberised bit of conductive material floating above them, the screen is a stock standard LCD, and the microcontroller is a little epoxy blob. But calling them ruggedized is disingenuous. You may as well call every old bit of electronics ruggedized.
There is nothing in them that's ruggedized and that can not remotely justify the price you pay for them. And on that note there is absolutely no reason why your cellphone can't be "ruggedized" in exactly the same way. Those calculator screens wouldn't stand to even the slightest impact if it weren't for that fold back clip down abs plastic case that gets put over them.
No one is suggesting you have to build the damn thing out of glass in a way that you can't attach a protective cover ala iPhone 4. But how about a higher resolution (not even bigger) screen with some colour and a damn processor that's worth something? Rip off the binary blob and put a decent processor in them, and sell it for what it's really worth ($40 not taking into account economies of scale, and $35 of those is the screen in hobby electronics prices).
Re:Specs, still by Rob+Simpson · 2012-12-19 21:17 · Score: 1

For Android, the Xylthe Calculator is pretty neat. Or you can use a copy of the rom from your TI-83+ in Andie Graph. As you said, the physical buttons make a difference, but it's handy to have that sort of thing whenever you want it.
Re:Specs, still by cheater512 · 2012-12-19 21:48 · Score: 1

Ah so its the buttons which cost 80% of the entire device.
Re:Specs, still by Carewolf · 2012-12-20 00:00 · Score: 1

In the testing centers at a lot of universities, the proctors know how to erase the ti-85 before you enter the testing center. Or they can loan you one to use for the test.
If you need a calculator at university. You are doing it wrong!
Re:Specs, still by nschubach · 2012-12-20 00:06 · Score: 1

The link must have cut something off?
Your search - sqrt(cos(3*x))*cos(100*y)+1.5*sqrt(abs(x)) + 0.8 x is from -1 to 1, y is from -1 to 1, z is from 0 ... - did not match any documents.

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Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Re:Specs, still by saihung · 2012-12-20 00:25 · Score: 3, Insightful

Amen. My HP 48GX made the TI look like a toy.
Re:Specs, still by LoRdTAW · 2012-12-20 01:04 · Score: 3, Insightful

The best math professor I had in college let us take a page of notes to an exam. He stated that its more important for us to understand the steps to solving a problem rather than memorizing a formula that can be easily looked up. And he was absolutely right because that was the first math class that I received an A+; 96%+ on every exam. And I came out with an excellent understanding of the material. Someone may think "hey, that's cheating!" But think about it for a moment, how is jotting down formulas and some notes on how to apply them cheating? If you don't understand the material how do you know which notes to make or how to apply the formulas? You wouldn't. And you would fail the exam.
More kids would benefit if teachers stopped with the bull shit rote learning of formulas and instead taught the kids how to use them. Its easy to bomb a test because you forgot its -b +- and not b +- or b^2-4ac and not b^2 + 4ac in the quadratic formula. Or that sine is opposite over hypotenuse and not adjacent over hyp. Basic trig and algebra are what usually scare kids away from math because of stupid shit like that. And its a shame because they form the foundation for advanced fields such as engineering and physics.
Re:Specs, still by nayrbn · 2012-12-20 01:23 · Score: 2

I agree the quadratic formula is not that important to memorize for the majority of math students. Completing the square is good enough, at any rate, and that's how you come up with the quadratic formula anyways. However, knowing the difference between sin and cos is more basic and more fundamental. If you can't remember them, then you probably don't understand the unit circle and that x goes with cosine and y with sin, and that is conceptually an important understanding.
Re:Specs, still by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 02:22 · Score: 0

($40 not taking into account economies of scale, and $35 of those is the screen in hobby electronics prices).
Not taking into account economies of scale. Well there you go. How many iPhones/Android phones are sold? How many TI Calculators? How often do you need to replace/upgrade your TI Calc?
Re:Specs, still by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 02:29 · Score: 0

because they bought out the textbook partnerships and schools all the math textbooks have how to do this on a ti sections. Your pretty much required to get one I had math teachers in high school that would give floating point problems and used the answer key based on the calculators float precision just to dick with people who didn't want to shell out the 100 for a peice of crap calculator
Re:Specs, still by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 02:41 · Score: 0

are you stating that the market is math teachers, and their captive students whom are forced to use what is mandated by their esteemed teaachers?
Re:Specs, still by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 03:17 · Score: 0

Understanding the material and being able to calculate the correct answer are two entirely separate things.
Yes, I can use a calculate to spit out the right answer.
Yes, I can do something by hand and spit out the right answer.
But, do I necessarily understand WHY it spits out the right answer when I do it by hand?
Not enough is done in pre-college mathematics to understand why things work the way they do. Sure, it may be touched upon, but we need much more in the way of proofs.
If someone is "exploiting a computer to get A's in calculus", they may not understand it. It's good being able to use technology to get the right answers. But understanding the problem is important. Errors can be problematic; you start learning about that in numerical analysis. Some calculus classes have "skills tests", a test to solve reasonable calculus problems without the aid of a calculator, which is required in order to pass the class. More math subjects should have that sort of test. There's no shame in multiple attempts as even the best of us make mistakes. But cheaters need to be weeded out
Re:Specs, still by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 03:20 · Score: 0

I remember we had calculator races at the end of a math class in high school. First calculator to the blackboard won! Back then we all had Ti-30's. They exploded nicely!
Re:Specs, still by phantomfive · 2012-12-20 03:33 · Score: 1

works for me

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Specs, still by phantomfive · 2012-12-20 03:35 · Score: 1

It can be really helpful to have a calculator that graphs things instantly for you, to give you a chance to get a feel for different graphs of equations

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Specs, still by AvitarX · 2012-12-20 03:38 · Score: 1

How's the battery?
My TI-85 and HP-48 both lasted months (if memory serves) of hours of daily use.

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Re:Specs, still by AmiMoJo · 2012-12-20 03:39 · Score: 2

Speaking of LCDs one of the reasons they suck so much is long term availability. If you want to build the same product for 5+ years you have to choose parts that will be available for that long. The kinds of LCDs you get in phones tend to only be available in very large quantities for a few years max, then you come out with a new model using the latest and greatest display.
We had this problem at work when creating a hand-held data readback device. I wanted a nice large full colour touch screen like my phone, but the best anyone could do was 3 year availability. I'd have gone with it anyway, but was overruled and ended up with a black and white one from the mid 90s that will be around forever and has multiple sources.

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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Re:Specs, still by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 04:29 · Score: 0

The TI-84 will last for a year on a single charge, and that's a lower bound.
Show me anything with the kind of specs you're talking that will last for a year on a single charge and I'd pay $1000 for it without a second thought.
Re:Specs, still by tibit · 2012-12-20 04:46 · Score: 1

It's a poor math test if merely having an arbitrary amount of notes will significantly affect your grade. In my college years, most professors would limit the amount of notes simply so that there'd be less distraction to other students from the inevitable hapless fool who brings in a foot of books. The amount was still more than enough to cover all the material -- you can fit a lot of stuff on a couple of letter-sized pages. I wrote my cheatsheets in LaTeX and people would ask me to share them after the exam. Once or twice the professor wanted a copy, too :)

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A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Re:Specs, still by tibit · 2012-12-20 04:49 · Score: 1

There's nothing conceptually important about the arbitrary choice of absolute phase of cosine and sine. It doesn't affect your understanding at all to know which one goes where, as long as you remember that they are offset in phase by 90 degrees, and that they are linearly independent vectors in a certain vector space. You could always come up with an arbitrary choice, write it up on top of the exam answers, and stick with it throughout -- it'd be perfectly acceptable, to me at least.

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A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Re:Specs, still by Guppy · 2012-12-20 04:52 · Score: 1

I've never managed to kill a calculator (graphing or otherwise) and it was definitely put through some abuse during high school.

I have, and it was easy. I just left in on the shelf, still containing the same set of alkaleak batteries last used during high school. :(
Re:Specs, still by Golddess · 2012-12-20 05:11 · Score: 1

Odd, works for me. Dunno why yours gets cut off, but it should end in "z is from 0.01 to 2.5"

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Re:Specs, still by nschubach · 2012-12-20 05:15 · Score: 1

Seems to be an issue with Chrome for Android.

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Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Re:Specs, still by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 05:25 · Score: 0

Wolfram Alpha (the web-based interface for Mathmatica) is available as an app.
Re:Specs, still by LoRdTAW · 2012-12-20 05:31 · Score: 1

Please re-read the first sentence: The best math professor I had in college let us take a page of notes to an exam.
See that highlighted part? A single page of notes was allowed to be present on your desk during the exam.
Besides its college, you are paying to be there (unless your parents are and you don't give a shit). If you cheat then what difference does it make? You obviously don't care to learn the material and just want a grade. You spent money for nothing but a piece of paper they hand you after you complete your course of study. Maybe in some fields you could get away with doing that. Others you cant. Bottom line is by the time your in college you should be mature enough to care about your education and actually apply yourself.
Re:Specs, still by ottothecow · 2012-12-20 05:48 · Score: 1

Yeah but there's a song for it...If you can't memorize it in the space of one class session (and solidify that memory with a few weeks of homework assignments and tests), you are probably an idiot. I can still sing that damn song and I haven't even thought about the quadratic formula in years.
Although that other stuff...yeah...that goes away if you don't practice it.

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Bottles.
Re:Specs, still by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 05:51 · Score: 0

The display on my TI-81 was broken. All it took was someone else throwing my 30 pound backpack (calculator include) off of the top of the bleachers on our high school football field (perhaps 30' up), and landing on blacktop.
Re:Specs, still by OhPlz · 2012-12-20 07:54 · Score: 1

Oddly enough, it seems the keys are what tends to kill the HP48s. I still have my old HP48GX. It powers on and the display comes up, but most of the buttons don't work.
At least there's an HP50 out there. And Droid48.
Re:Specs, still by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 11:27 · Score: 0

sqrt(cos(3*x))*cos(100*y)+1.5*sqrt(abs(x)) + 0.8 x is from -1 to 1, y is from -1 to 1, z is from 0 to 1
Re:Specs, still by thegarbz · 2012-12-20 20:37 · Score: 1

Yes and no. Subtle changes and revision are acceptable in many product lines. Sure that exact same make and model may not be available, but one with the same size, resolution, and interface most likely will be and frequently it's just a case of a firmware swap or a small modification to a PCB with a slight change in build number to get things going again.
We had this at my work too.
Re:Specs, still by tibit · 2012-12-21 01:26 · Score: 1

What I meant is that a page seems like a low limit. Never mind that, again, having notes is not cheating. I haven't seen any non-elementary math tests yet where notes as a stand in for understanding would change the outcome. Notes as a stand in for jogging your memory is IMHO entirely fair. Memory is not math-specific, and you wouldn't be testing someone's math skills, but memorization skills. I'm all for tests that, you know, are specific and try to focus on what's important -- here, understanding of particular mathematical topics. Memorizing equations, theorems, etc. is pointless. Outside of college nobody cares if you have memorized all that stuff. You're expected not to make mistakes -- you need to look things up and check your work, etc.

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A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Re:Specs, still by sjames · 2012-12-21 04:46 · Score: 1

Ultimately, it's market failure stacked upon market failure. The Ti reigns supreme in spite of being well overpriced because it is approved for use on the standardized tests and it would be very hard for a newcomer to gain similar approval for their calculator priced more reasonably given the low end hardware inside.
In turn, that is hard because the publisher of the standardized tests faces no competition for the testing. They don't feel pressure to get an approval program started to avoid students taking someone else's SAT with a cheaper calculator.
Meanwhile, colleges have no pressure at all to allow more than one standardized test for admissions.
And on and on.
Re:Specs, still by phantomfive · 2012-12-21 04:55 · Score: 1

Interesting point.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."

TI? by Brett+Buck · 2012-12-19 17:59 · Score: 1, Flamebait

I haven't paid any attention to the calculator market recently, but TI is still around? When I was in high school the TI-30 came out, and almost everyone had one, because it was $2 cheaper than a National Semiconductor equivalent and $20 cheaper than an HP. So that's what everybody's mom bought them. They were/are such crap that I have seen more than one of them thrown across the room into a cinder block wall because the keys didn't register correctly, either missing keystrokes or repeating keys. A guy at work had one - a new one that looked like it was made by Fisher-Price, I tried using it the other day, and it *still* frequently missed keystrokes and repeating. He had another, bigger one that may have been some model of the TI-84, and it did the same damn thing. And it's still fucking algebraic, for God's sake, you have to write out equations like you are still in elementary school.

Just get an HP like a grown-up and move on with your life.

Re:TI? by Pseudonym · 2012-12-19 18:09 · Score: 1

Yes, TI is still around. And yes, they still make some of the best op-amps around.

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sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Re:TI? by TheGratefulNet · 2012-12-19 18:29 · Score: 1

TI is still quite around. national semi, well, not so much.
(in the bay area, the NS logos were torn down the very day that TI bought them. sigh.)
and you mean burr-brown, not TI. they still mark the OA's burr-brown (BB) don't they? I think they do.

--

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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Re:TI? by The+Master+Control+P · 2012-12-20 00:59 · Score: 1

They have their own marks as well but yes, TI still make BB devices.

"Programming" by MrEricSir · 2012-12-19 18:03 · Score: 1

There was never any requirement that saved programs actually compile, of course, which means the calculator has a nifty spot to keep your crib sheet.

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There's no -1 for "I don't get it."

Re:"Programming" by Boltronics · 2012-12-19 21:51 · Score: 1

At my school, our TI-38 calculators had to be handed in prior to the examination for a factory reset.

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It's GNU/Linux dammit!
Re:"Programming" by omnichad · 2012-12-20 02:31 · Score: 1

Really?
Re:"Programming" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 04:04 · Score: 0

Guessing he meant TI-83...
Re:"Programming" by VGPowerlord · 2012-12-20 04:30 · Score: 1

I remember back when students were mainly using TI-82s and I had a TI-85 instead... I figured that the instructors wouldn't be that familiar with the 85, so I wrote a program that mimicked the TI-85 factory reset screen.
However, the instructors never actually cleared them.

--
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Re:"Programming" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 08:34 · Score: 0

Come on, you KNOW he just mistyped 83. Why do you have to be a jackass about a typo?
Re:"Programming" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-21 08:27 · Score: 0

"How to be an asshole, by Omnichad"
New York Times best seller.

Approved lists by ableal · 2012-12-19 18:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

You have to consider what it means for a calculator to be on approved lists for school systems all over the world.

You do not mess with that lightly.

Re:Approved lists by Radak · 2012-12-19 19:46 · Score: 4, Interesting

This is exactly right. The reason the TI-8x line has been around unchanged for so long is because school systems find it sufficient, but not too much, and teachers know exactly how to reset its memory. If you let kids start using whatever software they want on their smartphones, cheating would become much more widespread than it is now. When I was in high school, I used a HP 48S (still do from time to time) and I could have cheated my pants off with that if I wanted to, as the teachers didn't have a clue about it. (I didn't, but easily could have--more important to have things like Ant in my RAM!)
Re:Approved lists by Firehed · 2012-12-19 20:25 · Score: 2

Is using Google really cheating? That's exactly what you're going to do outside of a school if you don't know how to come up with the answer.
It's important that students understand fundamentals but to be honest anything beyond basic algebra is going to be useless for most people. Even as a software engineer, I use "advanced" math... never. For people wanting to go into careers that require that kind of stuff, they should take those classes or pick it up during an internship.
Then again, that applies to basically every subject. It's good to push slightly advanced stuff so students can find what they like and find enjoyably challenging to pursue it further (I took a lot of bio-type classes, remember none of it, and have used it precisely zero times outside of a classroom), but there's a point past a certain baseline when it's just going to frustrate people and take their time away from subjects that could actually turn into careers.

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How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Re:Approved lists by thegarbz · 2012-12-19 20:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

For people wanting to go into careers that require that kind of stuff, they should take those classes or pick it up during an internship.
They have those already. It's called a PhD. Every other degree exists to give you a basic grounding of all principles involved. I like your ideal but the reality is that the modern form of a career means you change jobs and specialties every 5 minutes. If you asked me a year ago if I were doing functional safety I would have said "Fucntional what?" If you asked me 3 years ago if I was going to work in the oil and gas industry I would have said no I much prefer micro electronics. And if you asked me in university if I ever thought I'd use an integral in my job, I'd have said hell no.
That's the problem. You don't know what you don't know, and how do you know that in 5 years from now you won't get a lucrative job offer working for some software company that develops simulation software suddenly making advanced maths a core skill of yours?
If we really got to pick our subjects in a way that made them only relevant for the jobs we were planning to get we'd find ourselves entrapped in one job. Kind of like our grandparents where career meant working for the same company in the same role for 20 years.
Re:Approved lists by AvitarX · 2012-12-20 03:46 · Score: 1

Exactly, I wish people understood where the word "University" came from.
I also wish "Universities" took it more seriously.

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Re:Approved lists by Liquid+Len · 2012-12-20 04:07 · Score: 1

Amen to that. I also have a HP48s, which I still use. Back when I was in school, I sometimes used it to cheat. To do this, I add to input many formulas or reproduce drawings, or write programs to perform some calculations (atomic physics comes to my mind). But in the process of doing that, you learn a lot. Eventually, you don't have to cheat anymore because you know pretty well the subject. And even if you didn't work enough to learn all you were supposed to, you've still learnt some of it. This makes a huge difference compared to, say, using a smartphone to browse the internet and find your answers.
Re:Approved lists by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 07:07 · Score: 0

Are you kidding? They don't know how to deal with even the TI-8x series.
My school had tons of TI-83's to loan out during higher-level math classes. They recommended that students buy their own if possible, though. The TI-83 was given as a "minimum spec". Since I was taking all of those classes and then some, I just bought my own. But I dropped the extra $20 for the TI-85, which has calculus functions the TI-83 doesn't have.
Teachers routinely would check the memory of the TI-83's they loaned out to wipe out saved "cheat" data. (There were several dozen, so they checked these constantly. They didn't have enough time to check them all right before the test.) They also did inspections before each test. The kids that bought the recommended TI-83 got their data wiped, cheats or no cheats. The teachers couldn't find the "memory" button on the TI-85, even though it was in the exact same place as the TI-83. Apparently, the TI-85's orange 2nd function key was so drastically different from the TI-83's blue one that they couldn't find anything. As a result, they saw the "memory screen" I wanted them to see.
I never used it to cheat, but my games and other apps stayed intact without me having to make backups all the time. Also, I had a few calculus functions I programmed myself that allowed me to quickly make a near-guess and finish a test much quicker than solving things by hand. I showed them to my calculus teacher, and she agreed that if I could program that, I could use it on the test. She also required my results to be more accurate than everyone else's (so a near-guess was usually not good enough). Smart teacher.
Re:Approved lists by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-21 04:14 · Score: 1

I owned a HP-15C, then a 28C (stolen,) and then a 48S. At my first school (DeepFry) they were the gold standard. I don't think TI even made a graphing calc when I bought my 28C. But when I changed schools (about 1990,) the 48 was not allowed to be used on exams - they knew one could cheat with them and had no clue how to prevent it. (Dunno if the 41 was legal.) So I went back to my 15C, which was legal.
The keyboard died on the 48 a couple of years ago. I still have the 15C and it works. I use emulation for a 48 on all my computers, and someday I will buy a 50.
(This will probably never get mod points now, but oh well.)

Re:Sorry, wait - what? My cell phone is better by ocop · 2012-12-19 18:21 · Score: 1

My thoughts exactly. Alternatively, get python running on Android and all of a sudden you can tack on whatever you need (Numpy/SciPy/Statstools etc, etc) and exceed the functionality of an entire piece of hardware. Just create a smart-phone/tablet front-end UI for one of the scientific computing packages (Sage or Python(x,y)) and TI is dead. When your product owes its utility to lagging technological literacy in education administration that business model isn't long for this world. TI would be better served moving to corner the software market...

Memories... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 18:23 · Score: 0

Back in school. building

21 KB RAM by timeOday · 2012-12-19 18:25 · Score: 2

These days it's kind of hard to wrap your head around just how little 21 Kilobytes of RAM is. You laptop or desktop has about 8 GB RAM, which is 400,000 times 21 KB. Put another way, 8GB RAM costs $40; at that rate, the RAM for 10 of these calculators would cost 1 cent.

Re:21 KB RAM by TheGratefulNet · 2012-12-19 18:52 · Score: 2

take a trip to arduino land where you get 16k or 32k for program space (in bytes).
turns out I was able to get about 10k lines of C (mixed c++) inside an arduino 328 32k flash chip.
but when you run out, its a hard-stop and you KNOW it. oh boy, do you know it. virtual memory? what's that.

--

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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Re:21 KB RAM by chthon · 2012-12-19 19:48 · Score: 1

My ZX-Spectrum in 1984, with its 48 kB RAM was more powerful than this thing, and I had a resolution of 256x192 pixels.
Re:21 KB RAM by ratbag · 2012-12-19 21:11 · Score: 2

The following assumes you were making a serious point - a self-inflicted "whooosh!" if you weren't.
Power, in this context, is relative. The power of the electronic calculator is obviously portability combined with immediacy. The resolution of which you speak so proudly came with a form factor that was inappropriate for putting in your pocket (unless you've got seriously baggy cargo pants on with room for a small CRT, a power supply, and a tape player or perhaps a microdrive).
The Spectrum's handling of maths from complex numbers upwards was also a little challenging (write your own routines from scratch).
Program retention was limited at launch time to saving to audio tape, which again hampered portability and also meant you couldn't just switch it on, factor a polynomial and get on with your life.
Horses for courses etc., and I don't think anyone would advocate using a ZX for maths, any more than you'd use a TI (or an HP) to learn BASIC programming (basic programming maybe, but not BASIC).
Re:21 KB RAM by chthon · 2012-12-19 22:35 · Score: 1

I think both. After I read the rest of the thread, I also became aware that the thing can even be more likened to a ZX Spectrum because of the Z80, and then my nickel fell also on the resolution and the color range, 320x256x16 means a memory of 160 k bytes of RAM. With its 21 k of working memory, that means 4 times the memory of the Speccy.
Yes, you are right.
Re:21 KB RAM by tibit · 2012-12-20 04:58 · Score: 1

You can do good old overlays. Works just fine. Of course the last time that development environments supported overlays out of the box was probably in the early 90s, but it's still doable with a bit of manual build scripting. I'm pretty sure a lot of your code could be shrunk quite a bit, too. Look at the assembly output and figure it out.

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A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.

Where can you even find components like that? by dargaud · 2012-12-19 18:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

I mean, I build embedded systems and we have problems _finding_ components so archaic. Where do they find them, I wonder.

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Non-Linux Penguins ?

Re:Where can you even find components like that? by smi.james.th · 2012-12-19 18:38 · Score: 1

TI makes them I believe...

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One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
Re:Where can you even find components like that? by makapuf · 2012-12-19 18:39 · Score: 5, Funny

Yeah, how could a major semiconductor firm which is deeply in embedded electronics find chips ? Mystery ...
Re:Where can you even find components like that? by pantherace · 2012-12-19 18:40 · Score: 1

They make them. Seriously TI fabs the Z80s for the calculators.
Re:Where can you even find components like that? by phantomfive · 2012-12-19 18:42 · Score: 1

They probably build them themselves, TI has a large chip collection they sell, including 'high end' OMAP chips for Androids, down to tiny flip-flops. Believe it or not, most of these calculators use old Z80 chips. Scroll down to the bottom of that page for some suppliers.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Where can you even find components like that? by Y-Crate · 2012-12-19 19:48 · Score: 1

They make them. Seriously TI fabs the Z80s for the calculators.
It seriously warms my heart that the Z80 still lives.
Re:Where can you even find components like that? by tibit · 2012-12-20 05:01 · Score: 1

Modern Z80 silicon can be made very power efficient if you want it so. TI probably makes their own version that they don't sell to anyone else. My bet is that this version consumes at least an order of magnitude less energy per clock cycle than the best off-the-shelf CMOS Z80 variant out there.

--
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Re:Where can you even find components like that? by phantomfive · 2012-12-20 05:35 · Score: 1

The Z80 in the TI85 runs at 1mhz. My guess is they haven't changed the design in over a decade; it wasn't really a power hog when it came out. A couple AA batteries could run it for six months without trouble.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Where can you even find components like that? by tibit · 2012-12-21 01:22 · Score: 1

I've made a Z80-based data logger and 4 AA batteries would power it maybe for a day. NMOS sucks :/

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A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.

It took so long because they had a lock in class by thaylin · 2012-12-19 18:51 · Score: 1

When you have a lock on the market what reason is to innovate?

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When you cant win, ad hominem.

Ha by gnu-sucks · 2012-12-19 18:56 · Score: 1

"That is all about to change now" Really? "320x240 16-bit color display, 3.5MB of flash ROM, and 21KB of RAM" I think my Mac SE had better specs than that. I think a gameboy might. This is not impressive, and I'm sure it will still cost too much. $100-$150? Not likely. TI will sell a lot of these, I'm sure, but overall their success has nothing to do with the technical specifications of their device. It has to do with clever marketing. Note to students: Buy the minimum calculator that the teacher requires (if they do require anything). Get a computer with some good plotting software if you need to graph functions to help you understand complicated new ideas. You could probably use the computer for other things too...

Re:Ha by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 21:54 · Score: 0

Your Mac SE fit in a pocket and ran 15 hours on AAAs?
Re:Ha by blueg3 · 2012-12-20 01:52 · Score: 1

Neither the SE nor the Gameboy had a color display.
Re:Ha by ArcadeMan · 2012-12-20 04:37 · Score: 1

The GameBoy Color had a 160×144 pixels color display.
The GameBoy Advance had a 240×160 pixels color display.
The Nintendo DS had two 256×192 pixels color displays.
The Nintendo 3DS has a 320×240 pixels color touch-screen display at the bottom.
I'm hoping someone will develop a driver board for the 320×240 display of the Nintendo 3DS to have a source of cheap, high-quality touchscreens for homebrew projects. I would also make a really cool tiny display for early arcade games for tiny MAME cabinets.

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Re:Ha by Guspaz · 2012-12-20 08:47 · Score: 1

The TI-82, introduced in 1993, had 28KB of RAM. So, this new calculator is in some respects a downgrade when compared to TI's own product from almost twenty years ago.
WTF, TI. Could you really not afford to slap a 512KB chunk of RAM into that SoC of yours? Really?
And for that matter, the thing still has a crappy old Z80 processor, and not much flash. In fact, this new calculator is worse in every single respect to the 2004 model of TI-89 Ti except for the screen. Less RAM, less performance, less flash...
ARM is targeting the Cortex A7 (their ultra-low-power ARM core) at sub-$100 smartphones. Surely at some point somebody is going to slap one of those smartphones in a calculator body and capture a significant portion of the market...
Re:Ha by gnu-sucks · 2012-12-20 11:14 · Score: 1

I don't see why they couldn't just put a few megs of ram. And for that matter, an SD card reader like my Hp-48g+ has.
Oh wait, that's why I switched to HP...
Re:Ha by gnu-sucks · 2012-12-20 11:15 · Score: 1

True. But in all other respects it (SE) is superior. And I'll bet someone had a card for external color display. Maybe Radius?
Re:Ha by toddestan · 2012-12-20 16:25 · Score: 1

There are other considerations. If they use more than 32k of ram in their Z80 calculators they have to use ram paging, which when they did it on the TI-86 made for a noticeably slower calculator versus the older TI-85. That could be part of reason why they are reluctant to give the memory a bump.
Re:Ha by Guspaz · 2012-12-21 02:13 · Score: 1

Then why not give it 32KB of RAM instead of 21KB? Or how about using a Z180 (1MB address range) or an eZ80 (16MB address range)? Or how about using a modern processor instead of an ancient Z80? It's not like they haven't got a line of calculators using a completely different architecture (TI-89/TI-92)...
The other consideration that you mention, that sticking with an ancient processor of questionable usefulness causes severe limitations, is part of the whole problem.

What? by JWW · 2012-12-19 19:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

Back in my day we didn't have this fancy TI-84 stuff. We had our RPN HP calculators and we liked them just fine.

Oh, and get off my lawn ;-)

Re:What? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2012-12-19 22:17 · Score: 1

'round my parts, an HP calculator was the High School graduation gift of choice for academically excellent kids.
I got a HP 34C for being accepted at MIT and Princeton.
Rich dumb kids got cars instead of calculators. Oh, well.

--
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 23:39 · Score: 0

The calculator is worth now more than the car would have been and it probably still works fine, so win win situation :)

When you are the market.... by bobjr94 · 2012-12-19 19:24 · Score: 2

I guess you can get away with charging $150 for something worth about $35. Same as having to buy a college text book for $235 that's worth about $40. For $135 you can get a 3DS or a cheap android from a pre-paid carrier with a 800-1000mhz cpu and 8GB ram. 3.5MB flash rom ? A 4GB micro sd costs about 6$ now ?

Teaching with calculators by sgunhouse · 2012-12-19 19:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

I was teaching when the original TI-83 came out - the earlier 81 and 85 came out while I was in college. At the university I taught at, we actually required students to have a graphing calculator for certain classes.

At the college level. it isn't hard for a good teacher (or textbook) to ask questions that actually test the student and not the calculator - at least, unless they have one of those algebraic calculators. Even then, things like word problems require them to identify the right formula and set it up properly (which is more important than actually being able to grind out the numerical answer from there).

Having said that, I'm not sure how some elementary school teacher is supposed to teach fractions when even fairly basic calculators can handle fractions these days (some even displaying the result as you'd write it on paper). Require students to have a specific level of calculator for each grade? I'm sure that would go over really well with parents ...

Of course, I already have one of the Casio CG-10 calculators.

Re:Teaching with calculators by NJRoadfan · 2012-12-20 00:28 · Score: 3, Interesting

My college Calculus and Pre-Calculus courses prohibited calculators of any form. You really didn't need them as the courses were geared towards problem solving and not pure arithmetic.
Re:Teaching with calculators by TheRealMindChild · 2012-12-20 03:06 · Score: 1

We used a TI-83 in Calculus, in high school. It was required and if you didn't have one, they loaned one to you like they would a text book. Anyway, you could solve for the numeric answer when solving for things like derivatives/integrals, but the lessons always required the formula for the answer, so it didn't let anyone be lazy. It was there to verify your work and organize your workflow. It was valuable and anyone who says otherwise just mustn't know what they are doing

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"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Re:Teaching with calculators by Archenoth · 2012-12-23 01:20 · Score: 1

I remember I would memorize a bunch of formulas and program them into little programs where I could type in some numbers and have it spit out the answer...
Then I would derive the work I was supposed to do to get that answer, using fuzzy math whenever I had an issue.
It always seemed to work.

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The arch foe.

Obligatory XKCD by WWJohnBrowningDo · 2012-12-19 19:45 · Score: 1

Obligatory XKCD

Re:Obligatory XKCD by skade88 · 2012-12-19 23:19 · Score: 1

I had it in the original submission but they took it out for the front page.:(

RPN was always the best by Radak · 2012-12-19 19:51 · Score: 1

Back in my day we didn't have this fancy TI-84 stuff. We had our RPN HP calculators and we liked them just fine.

Oh, and get off my lawn ;-)

What you do you mean "back in my day"? RPN was and still is the best way to do handheld calculations.

When I was in university, I explained RPN to some classmates one day and was met with the incredulity I was used to, so I proposed a race. Without the participants looking, one student was to write a hugely complex, multiply tested function on the blackboard and then we'd both turn around and start feeding it to our calculators (some fancy TI job for him, HP 49G+ for me). I had the answer before my opponent was even 20% of the way through entering it. RPN uber alles.

Re:RPN was always the best by Radak · 2012-12-19 19:53 · Score: 1

...multiply tested function...
Er, damn. Multiply nested.
Re:RPN was always the best by ratbag · 2012-12-19 20:21 · Score: 1

Absolutely. I recently treated myself to a brand-new HP50g after a couple of years of using 48 series emulators on my Mac and iOS devices. Makes maths fun again and it's inspired me to re-learn a lot of the calculus that I've forgotten since Uni. Back in the day ('87 was when I stopped learning maths the first time) I had a Casio 7000G. Rambling now, but RPN FTW!
Re:RPN was always the best by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 21:40 · Score: 0

Ack the 50g rocks, particularly the CAS and units functio s. I can't do without a programmable calculator still. I've had just about all of the decent ones: TI-81, Casio FX-6500, TI-85, TI-86, TI-92, TI-89, NSpire and now the 50G. The 50g is orders of magnitude better than even the NSpire.
Re:RPN was always the best by RoccamOccam · 2012-12-20 03:16 · Score: 1

Wouldn't it be nice to have a touchscreen phone with an (enhanced) HP calc app *and* a slide-out HP calculator keyboard?
Re:RPN was always the best by OhPlz · 2012-12-20 08:06 · Score: 1

If HP actually wanted to do something interesting for once, how about a Bluetooth HP calculator keyboard? Have your touchscreen phone and your calculator keyboard.
Re:RPN was always the best by RoccamOccam · 2012-12-20 13:42 · Score: 1

Great idea!

Re:It took so long because they had a lock in clas by Neil+Boekend · 2012-12-19 20:03 · Score: 1

That's not quite it: the market doesn't want them to innovate. The reason these simple calculators are so widely used in classes (despite their cost) is that they are simple calculators. On my school they didn't like the TI83. It could be programmed and they didn't like that. We were legally required to use it during our exams so they couldn't refuse it to us, but they would have if they could.
The lower levels of education, which weren't required to use a TI83 (or equivalent) weren't allowed to use them.

And rightfully so. I spend some time learning to program on the thing, and programmed some math stuff (a pythagoras program amongst others. It showed every step the teacher wanted to see on the paper) I then found out how I could send it to connected TI 83s. I didn't need the program anymore, I worked enough with it to know the way by heart, but my classmates didn't. They just punched in the numbers and wrote down what the calculator said.

The second year someone built a parallel port cable, so we had games on the things. I programmed a simple scrolling space shooter myself (with ascii art), but most of us were playing penguin (a simpe sidescroller) during boring classes.

--
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.

Re:It took so long because they had a lock in clas by thaylin · 2012-12-19 20:09 · Score: 1

These are thing I can understand not being allowed to innovate, but a larger screen, touch controls, color, are all innovations they could have done years before now, without allowing for the items you mention.

--
When you cant win, ad hominem.

Tis the season for heartwarming, after all by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 20:35 · Score: 0

Here ya go, 19 different Zilog-made Z80 in-stock at Digikey, starting at $4.48:
http://www.digikey.ca/scripts/dksearch/dksus.dll?FV=fff40027%2Cfff80164&k=z80&vendor=0&mnonly=0&newproducts=0&ptm=0&fid=0&quantity=0&PV-5=31943&stock=1

It's older than Star Wars. It's older than Space Invaders. It entered service before the Shuttle. It's a cool little chip that got such a lot right.

Is it the oldest microprocessor still in production?

Re:Tis the season for heartwarming, after all by arth1 · 2012-12-20 00:59 · Score: 1

Is it the oldest microprocessor still in production?
Quite likely - the 8086 (no, not 80186, just plain 8086) is also around, but it's a couple of years newer.
There may be some that still manufacture the 6502, if so, it's likely the oldest.
Re:Tis the season for heartwarming, after all by omnichad · 2012-12-20 04:40 · Score: 1

I thought the 8086 through 80386 just went out of production in 2007.
Re:Tis the season for heartwarming, after all by arth1 · 2012-12-20 04:48 · Score: 1

I thought the 8086 through 80386 just went out of production in 2007.
By Intel, I would assume. That doesn't stop them from still being produced. Here's the 8086 and 8088.
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/CP80C86-2Z/CP80C86-2Z-ND/1976070
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/IP80C88/IP80C88-ND/1063276
Re:Tis the season for heartwarming, after all by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 04:49 · Score: 0

I do now that 6502-cores was used as an integrated part in a controller chip for keychain photo-frames, and you can still get new 65816s if you want (beefier version with optional 16-bit bus but has compatibility mode to run code for the older ones).
Also, 8051 is still extremely popular in things you'd least expect to find it, because the IP-core is so easy to embed in other chips that if you have some asic to do something (say, like a radio-chip for a wireless keyboard), and you need to embed a CPU in there to actually run the protocol and reduce chip-count in the finished product, you would most likely choose an 8051, plunk it down with a bit or ROM and RAM and call it a day.
Some USB-to-serial chips also have 8051 cores.
Also, Sifteo Cubes all run 8051-cores in the display-cubes. :)
Re:Tis the season for heartwarming, after all by omnichad · 2012-12-20 04:51 · Score: 1

I thought ancient product lines still produced by their original manufacturer was exactly what we were talking about?
Re:Tis the season for heartwarming, after all by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 07:13 · Score: 0

The 6502 is out of production and has been for a long time. In fact, nobody even really knows the design anymore. It's been lost to the mists of time and corporate takeovers.
NES emulation enthusiasts have had a very hard time getting their hands on the actual layouts for the chip, relying almost entirely on people peeling/melting/acid-bathing the tops off of old, used ones.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the NES was the last commercial use of the 6502 (technically, the 65c02).
Re:Tis the season for heartwarming, after all by Y-Crate · 2012-12-20 08:51 · Score: 1

Here ya go, 19 different Zilog-made Z80 in-stock at Digikey, starting at $4.48:
http://www.digikey.ca/scripts/dksearch/dksus.dll?FV=fff40027%2Cfff80164&k=z80&vendor=0&mnonly=0&newproducts=0&ptm=0&fid=0&quantity=0&PV-5=31943&stock=1
It's older than Star Wars. It's older than Space Invaders. It entered service before the Shuttle. It's a cool little chip that got such a lot right.
Is it the oldest microprocessor still in production?
I wish I had enough electrical knowledge to make use of them. I remember reading Hackers back in the day, dreaming of being one of those guys building a brand-new computer from literal scratch (not mobo + hard drive controller, etc) .

fancy calculators by tracius01 · 2012-12-19 20:41 · Score: 0

it's funny how you americans praise your fancy calculators, here in my country, Romania, these devices are ban in universities & colleges. oh well.. maybe this is the reason why we kick your ass in math, physic and chemistry contests and have better paid jobs in your own country.

Battery Life? by rsmith-mac · 2012-12-19 20:50 · Score: 1

One thing TFA touches on but doesn't answer is what battery life is like. Those old Z80 monochome beasts could easily last for a whole semester on a single set of batteries; in terms of hours of runtime that works out to dozens and dozens of hours (the similar Gameboy got 30+ hours, and that's with it working at full tilt every second it's turned on!).

So what's the impact on battery life by using a color screen? A Z80 + RAM uses so little power these days that surely the bulk of the unit's power supply is going to the screen. And as much as I do agree a color screen is handy, is giving up battery life for it a good tradeoff?

Re:Battery Life? by Rob+Simpson · 2012-12-19 22:13 · Score: 1

Plus, I consider a greyscale reflective LCD to be much easier on the eyes over a long time than a backlit colour screen. A decent resolution one would be a nice (and long overdue) upgrade, though. Maybe something like the one on the Sony PEG-SL10 from 10 years ago?
Re:Battery Life? by pnakotus015 · 2012-12-20 03:25 · Score: 1

TI has a FAQ on their site:
How long does the charge last on the TI Rechargeable Battery?
For student use, the TI Rechargeable Battery is expected to last up to two weeks of normal use on a single charge. For classroom use,
the TI Rechargeable Battery is expected to last up to five days of normal use on a single charge.

320x240 by blind+biker · 2012-12-19 20:52 · Score: 1

There is simply no justification for such low resolution screen. I know the argument about TI calculators being on approved list - but a higher screen resoltion won't make them "un-approved". Fuck, in this day an age such a low resolution screen is probably exactly as expensive as a 800x480.

I can't shake off the impression that TI are just being dicks because they can.

--
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.

Re:320x240 by drinkypoo · 2012-12-20 00:45 · Score: 1

I can't shake off the impression that TI are just being dicks because they can.
It's called a public corporation. As long as the money keeps coming in at a pace they're happy with, they don't change behavior, no matter what that behavior might be. Sometimes it produces simply a shitty calculator, as in this case. Sometimes people die in great numbers, e.g. Union Carbide in Bhopal. Sometimes the repercussions last for decades, e.g. BP in the Gulf.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:320x240 by blind+biker · 2012-12-20 07:09 · Score: 1

It's called a public corporation. As long as the money keeps coming in at a pace they're happy with, they don't change behavior, no matter what that behavior might be. Sometimes it produces simply a shitty calculator, as in this case. Sometimes people die in great numbers, e.g. Union Carbide in Bhopal. Sometimes the repercussions last for decades, e.g. BP in the Gulf.
I agree 100%, but TI might regret their dickishness fairly soon: I have Mathlab on my Nexus 7, and I have to say, this gives the most gorgeous, powerful and decadent experience of a "calculator" I've ever had. Graphs at HD resolution, awesome interface... only the "keyboard" is somewhat shittier - but to be honest, TI's calculator keyboards aren't top-notch anymore, either.

--
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.

"Yeah well"? by wonkey_monkey · 2012-12-19 21:21 · Score: 1

+10 for writing your own summary and not just copy-pasting from the article.
-100 for using "Yeah well"

--
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.

Re:"Yeah well"? by skade88 · 2012-12-19 23:17 · Score: 1

Noted for next time!

Re:It took so long because they had a lock in clas by Rob+Simpson · 2012-12-19 21:51 · Score: 1

Touch controls are overrated, and I'd rather read a greyscale LCD that's easy on the eyes and lasts all year on AAAs than a backlit colour screen that burns through the nonreplaceable rechargable battery in a matter of hours.

And here I was hoping that the C would stand for: by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 22:31 · Score: 0

C

Sigh. Well, I can dream, can't I? By the way, existing C compilers for Z80 are incredibly inefficient... to the point where they don't even do register allocation. Can you believe it?

Re:And here I was hoping that the C would stand fo by skade88 · 2012-12-19 23:21 · Score: 1

Feeling up to writing a c compiler for this calc using the tools they give you?

Day Late and a Dollar Short by Zero_DgZ · 2012-12-20 00:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

I remember back when the TI-83 "boom" was happening in public schools around here and math textbooks were starting to show up with content in them tailored to TI-83 calculators. Suddenly, it was required that students have "a graphing calculator" for math courses, on pain of automatic failure. I'm not sure how this happened but I imagine it involved large sums of money changing hands: Somehow, every single published textbook was chock full of key-by-key instructions on how to solve problems that applied ONLY to TI-8x series calculators, and none other. Never were the concepts behind the button presses explained, it was just a matter of "press this button, then this button, then enter your value, then press this button..." So, while the schools were not able to admit that what you really needed was a TI-83 calculator and none other without exception, that's really what this new policy meant. In the early days, most primary school teachers didn't have much experience working with these "newfangled" calculators and were not able to offer assistance or background explanation about any of these button-pressing procedures, so the lucky ducklings with non-TI calculators (like me!) were basically shit outta luck. I had, and still have, a Casio CFX-8950GB Plus, which was at the time and still is superior to the TI-83 line in every possible way. It also has a color screen, but owing to the times it can only do four colors. Even still.

However the heck this twisted situation came about, it meant that TI wound up with a near-monopoly on the graphing calculator market, considering the lion's share of that market is mandatory primary education, most of it in public schools (this is in the USA, mind you). So, they've been able to churn out basically the same calculator pretty much without change or improvement and charge the same price for it at retail. I'll bet you a nickel it's a shitton cheaper for TI to manufacture a TI-83 now, with it's tiny simple processor and chunky low-rez monochrome screen than it was back in the early '90's. I'll bet the damn thing prints money for them.

Meanwhile, the rest of the market (and the world) innovates, improves, and moves on. This move to stick a 320x240 screen and a "whopping" 21k of RAM would be a bold and exciting one if it happened 15 years ago. Somehow, I picture today's students failing to get excited about a machine that's considerably less capable than a low-end current smartphone. Hell, I have a first- or second-generaton PocketPC PDA that's more powerful than that.

I predict that this machine will cost just as much if not more than the old calculators, the old style calculators will stay on the market as a "budget" option for poor kids but their price will not drop much or at all (especially if the zooty color model costs considerably more than the current price point), and nobody who isn't forced to buy one as the particular calculator for a particular math course will care; From a functional standpoint, as opposed to your specific "press this button" classroom requirements, better tools are already available elsewhere and will continue to be.

Try to calculate sin(pi) using a TI... by Damouze · 2012-12-20 00:29 · Score: 1

In my years in secondary school and later on at university the usage of any TI calculator was strongly discouraged, the reason being that it could not even calculate the sine of pi properly. Instead of plain 0, it gave a (infinitessimally) minute number instead...

--
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.

Re:Try to calculate sin(pi) using a TI... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 00:50 · Score: 0

Interestingly enough, the HP48G and HP35s also do this (and give the same value as each other). So that maybe not the best of tests.
(My guess as to why this occurs is because the calculators use an approximation of pi, rounded or truncated to the precision the calculator allows)
Re:Try to calculate sin(pi) using a TI... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 03:52 · Score: 0

Which calculator are you referring to? I just tested this on my TI-83+ and got exactly 0. Are you sure you weren't trying sin(3.14) or something?
Re:Try to calculate sin(pi) using a TI... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 13:00 · Score: 0

I just used my trusty TI-89 that I use everyday (engineer) and it correctly gives 0 as the answer.

the point of a graphing calculator? by Gothmolly · 2012-12-20 00:36 · Score: 2

We did math the old fashioned way, with a "scientific" calculator, and did the graphs by hand using colored pencils. But I guess nothing of importance was created before the invention of the graphing calculator.

--
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.

Why color? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 01:01 · Score: 0

Did I miss something? Why do these need to be in color? Data is a black and white matter. I don't see the benefit.

Re:Why color? by neminem · 2012-12-20 03:44 · Score: 1

You can play some pretty darn decent games on a TI-89. More importantly, you could do that *at school* if the teacher isn't paying enough attention to what you're doing. I played *so* much Tetris in calc in high school (well, a variant of it where blocks fell if they weren't supported, so you could get up to 14-row combos if you were good and lucky.)
Bet the new color screen will make games way better.
The real wtf is why'd they name this something indicating it's a variant of an *84*? 84s were slightly-upgraded 83s, the crappiest calculators they made! (Heck, the Basic variant they supported, had support for exactly 26 variables, named uppercase A through uppercase Z. It was a joke.)
Re:Why color? by wed128 · 2012-12-20 03:48 · Score: 1

Readability? if you graph 3 lines on the same plot, they are easier to read if they are in different colors. This is the only use-case i can come up with.
Re:Why color? by omnichad · 2012-12-20 04:53 · Score: 1

Multiple equations graphed together are easier to differentiate when seen in separate colors.
Re:Why color? by petteyg359 · 2012-12-21 05:30 · Score: 1

83 the crappiest? Have you forgotten the 82?
Re:Why color? by neminem · 2012-12-21 05:36 · Score: 1

Nope. I hadn't forgotten about them, as I had never seen one or heard of them until just now. Back when I saw a lot of TIs (i.e. because I was in high school or college), I only ever saw 83s, 84s, 85s, 86s and 89s.
Apparently there was even a worse calculator than that, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-80
Learned something new today!

Better question by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 01:14 · Score: 1

I always assumed innovation lagged because the folks at TI (and HP) assumed that the coming ubiquity of cheap general purpose computers would render their innovations useless. After all, everything they do could be easily replicated on a computer.

Technically, anyway, this could happen. It should happen. But it hasn't. Show me one decent scientific (or accounting, or whatever) calculator (or a capable evolutionary offshoot) for the iPad, for example. Just one. Where is it? WFT?

The question isn't "Why didn't TI do this sooner." The question should be "Why is anyone still making calculators at all?" - which is another way of asking "Why in hell hasn't anyone created a decent replacement that runs on my iPad, Android phone, etc.?

Re:Better question by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 03:30 · Score: 0

Why? Mostly for us Luddites!
Actually, I still use my hp-10c even when doing/programming math stuff on the PC instead of the stupid calc on MSWindows. I know the my calculator very well, its easier and quicker to enter numbers/functions and sometimes (not often) I do work that's not on the PC.
Re:Better question by badkarmadayaccount · 2012-12-25 09:04 · Score: 1

http://midp-calc.sourceforge.net/

--
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.

Battery life by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 01:45 · Score: 0

One word: Batterylife

How many weeks can you go on a charge on that LG-phone?
An old calc does months on a set of easily replaceable batteries.

root it and go to jail by decora · 2012-12-20 01:45 · Score: 3, Interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI_signing_keys

Re:root it and go to jail by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 10:09 · Score: 0

Nobody went to jail over that.
Also, what the hell is TI thinking? It's a friggin' high-end calculator. It's a tool used specifically to teach people the concepts needed to understand, and, more importantly, break that encryption.
Using math problems to hide the inner workings of a calculator is like building a wall of cake to disguise the refrigerator to keep fatties out.

TI did not forget. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 02:07 · Score: 0

TI understands what innovation means, it means that they could end up with a device that can't be used on standardized tests. TI choose to continue making what was allowed verses taking a chance on a new device, and if you think that this was unwise, consider that no competitor brought any competitive device that was more innovative, to the market during that time span.

This is school, they have to do everything ass-bac by Joe_Dragon · 2012-12-20 02:55 · Score: 1

This is school, they have to do everything ass-backwards.

It's just like closed book tests. They don't test if you can do the work they test how good you are at cramming.

Older calcs still available (at full price) by mister_playboy · 2012-12-20 03:41 · Score: 1

I was dragged into a Best Buy for Xmas shopping, and I happened to see the TI calc section. Interestingly, they had several of the older model calcs that have been out of production for years available new in the box.

I couldn't help but chuckle seeing the same $160 price tag on both a TI-89 Titanium and a Nspire CAS color. I love my TI-89Ti, but there's a big difference in the hardware it and the new shiny, yet no price difference...

Monopoly indeed.

--
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will

Kids These Days by jonadab · 2012-12-20 03:41 · Score: 1

> Do you remember those large TI-8X line of calculators with a BW
> display from when you were growing up and learning all about math?

Umm, no, I do not "remember" graphing calculators from when I was growing up.

The calculator my parents had when I was growing up ran on a nine-volt battery, was advertised as having a _floating_ decimal point (a state-of-the-art feature at the time), had a grand total of sixteen buttons (seventeen if you count the on/off slider switch), and could not add and multiply at the same time. Seriously, if you keyed in 2 + 3 x 4 =, it would tell you 20, no fooling.

--
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.

Oblig XKCD by Disallowed · 2012-12-20 04:25 · Score: 1

http://xkcd.com/768/

no news here... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 04:28 · Score: 0

we all know college books, software, calculators, etc are a complete rip off and we go along with it. none of the vendors involved have any obligation to produce anything new, better, innovative, cost effective, whatever -- because the business model doesn't support it. they are required purchases, there is no competition or supply and demand. you go to college and you get ripped off -- deal with it.

Re:It took so long because they had a lock in clas by thaylin · 2012-12-20 04:43 · Score: 1

Thanks you, I love my TI NSpire because of its touch controls, drop down menus and larger screen. I would rather have a color screen that lets me see the different curves more clearly.

--
When you cant win, ad hominem.

Re:And here I was hoping that the C would stand fo by tibit · 2012-12-20 05:04 · Score: 1

It's not worth the trouble. Seriously. It'd be a semester project for a compiler writing course anyway.

--
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.

Will it do RPN? by Tweezak · 2012-12-20 06:19 · Score: 1

Pass.

HP where are you by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 06:51 · Score: 0

The 50G is almost seven years old now. Will a new HP calculator ever appear?

HP-32s was the best student calculator. by somename · 2012-12-20 07:11 · Score: 1

I think it still is. It had all the functions one would ever need for most students and more, it's compact, and it's intuitive in use(once you understand RPN). Why do you even need a graphing calculator for high school math or even underclass math courses?

The TI nSpire has a color screen... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 14:24 · Score: 0

Color Screen? TI nSpire Much?

Re:It took so long because they had a lock in clas by 0100010001010011 · 2012-12-20 15:07 · Score: 1

Except the TI-89 could be made faster and the whole thing could probably be a SoC at this point. You could get more battery life out of it. It could solve harder integrals but still be relatively the same product.

Droid 48 by Road · 2012-12-20 16:04 · Score: 1

If you like RPN. Droid48 is an HP48 emulaitor for android. Works great on my phone.

Why is the TI-8X still relevant? by cyn1c77 · 2012-12-20 18:24 · Score: 1

I never understood the appeal of those TI-8X calculators. It was always more instructive to learn to plot curves with a pencil and paper by taking limits and simultaneously solving equations... especially since you didn't always have a calculator in your pocket.

Nowdays, we have Mathematica, Matlab and Maple on our computers. Matlab Mobile is available for iOS and a mobile Mathematica version is in development as well.

Why would you buy an overly complex calculator that is trying to be a computer when you probably have a phone in your pocket with more processing power?

You are right, and you're wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-21 07:33 · Score: 0

Yes, you are right on the things you stated.

But, consider that you are most likely more math savvy than most students. If a student can't handle simple correlation of y to sine and x to cosine, they more than likely aren't capable of getting the (somewhat more abstract) notions of a simple phase difference.

I'm not telling you are wrong on your math, just saying that some things, in some circumstances, should be rote memorized. Even if there is a more general case that students might (or might not) understand.

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TI-84+C-Silver Edition: That C Stands For Color

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