Slashdot Mirror
Full Review of the Color TI-84 Plus
KermMartian writes "The TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition isn't the first color-screen graphing calculator, or even TI's first color calculator, but it's a refresh of a 17-year-old line that many have mocked as antiquated and overpriced. From an advanced review model, the math features look familiar, solid, and augmented with some new goodies, while programming looks about on par with its siblings. The requisite teardown uncovers the new battery, Flash, ASIC/CPU, and LCD used in the device. Although there are some qualms about its speed and very gentle hardware upgrades beyond the screen, it looks to be an indication that TI will continue this inveterate line for years to come."
Lots of screenshots and pictures of the innards too.
Does it have RPN?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"Power: Rechargeable lithium-polymer battery, ~5-10 hours of use
Battery Life: Officially 5 days of classroom use or 2 weeks of homework use
"
That's really, REALLY crappy! for a 15Mhz, 1287k ram device! i would have espected at least ten times that!
emulate on an emulator. On your smartphone. Free and better.
And not allowed in the classroom settings that these things are mainly used. Too easy to switch to notes/google/more powerful apps.
The target market for this calculator is high school.. How many slashdotters are in high school?
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
Why would anyone need color on a calculator? It just drains battery life! I'd rather like to see standard batteries with long life, a small form factor, tons of easy to use functions including CAS, good keys, and an outstanding printed manual. Apart from the form factor various older HP and TI calculators fit this description, but I'd love to see something like the Casio Slim but with CAS and RPN. ;-)
Standardized testing is the only reason I ever had a specialized calculator like this (TI-89). Now that I am out of school it has just been collecting dust in my desk drawer.
Graphing calculators are typically banned anyway.
What evidence do you have for this statement?
The most you'll be taking a test with is a TI-30.
I guess my daughter's math classes (AP math and AP statistics) are outliers then. They're all required to use a TI-84/85.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
Pity the article was too darn lazy to summarize the tech specs:
CPU: custom z80 @ 6 / 15 MHz
LCD: 320x240, 16-bit
RAM: 128K of internal RAM, 21K user-accessible
ROM: 4MB Flash ROM chip, 3.5MB user-accessible.
IO: serial port, miniUSB jack
Keys: 50 dedicated keys
Programming languages: TI BASIC, z80 Assembly
Pity people couldn't provide benchmarks of couple common integrals across the HP48GX, HP49, HP50, TI-82, TI-84, so we can see how fast it is.
Many colleges utilize graphing calculators in courses now instead of requiring all work to be done out on paper. Calculator apps on smartphones are generally disallowed due to the possibility of switching into another app (such as a web browser or text messaging) during an exam.
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
Because teachers are paranoid the chill'ins will cheat in class. Anything with a radio is verboten as a matter of course, and likewise anything "too powerful" isn't allowed. Finagle forbid they actually spend braincycles on solving a problem and leave the arithmetic to something that's designed to crunch numbers quickly and correctly. Far better to keep them busy doing busy work.
Of course any smart phone today could run Derive in a DOS emulator and probably still have enough cycles left over to play Angry Birds, but that would make math "too easy." Can't have that...
Funny story: Talked to a physics teacher (high school level) ages ago in a school where they standardized on HP's line rather than TI's. HP's did infrared communications whereas TI typically requires a physical cable to "network" between devices. The teacher said one day he looked up from his desk during a test and noticed a bunch of mirrors and prisms strewn about the room with students carefully aiming their calculators. Being an extremely cool teacher, he said something to the effect of, "I know what you're doing, but you had to use physics to make it work, so I'll let it slide once. Get ride of the glass and don't do it again."
Is it $10 or less yet?
A state needs to contract out the creation of calculators to some firm and just get them for $10 a pop. There is no reason TI should be getting $100 for them.
I believe the OP was referring to standardized tests. If memory serves, when I took the ACT graphing calculators were forbidden since you could easily store all manner of cheat sheets onboard.
Which means students just cheat by storing the formulas in the calculators. That is how we did it.
There were even fake reset the calculator applications.
I have a good emulation of an HP48GX on my phone, however, although the emulation is extremely faithful (it's actually a proper emulation and uses the ROM from the calculator, rather than just an app that looks like the calculator) I'd much rather use a real calculator because the problem is on a small touch screen with no tactile feedback, it's very easy to miskey and I spend half my time correcting miskeys. Also, with the application up and the screen turned on with the phone, and if I'm spending significant time doing maths problems, the phone's battery gets significantly used (my phone isn't brand new and the battery has lost a fair bit of capacity due to age). By comparison an actual calculator will go an awful long time before running its batteries down.
Now I could use the computer to do it, but I'd rather have a separate device that's not using up screen space while using the computer.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Graphing calculators are typically required in advanced math courses anyway.
FTFY.
Same capabilities and still >$100. Are we paying for buttons here? This is no longer special.
The simple answer, to prevent cheating in tests. It's a limited use device that typically can only be used for the intended purpose. (I'm sure some have worked out a way to cheat with them, but if they're inventive enough to cheat with them then they generally have useful life skills and should probably pass anyway, pity about the moral implications though).
The requirement of TI-84/85 in so many classes and standardized tests is a freaking sin. It's almost like a government granted monopoly that fills Ti's coffers, despite equal or better alternatives existing since the whole graphing calculator became an option (I say "almost like" because my understanding is that most of these testing agencies and schools are not being controlled directly by the central government and merely make the decision out of laziness and not wanting to review new or competing technology). TI has never needed to lower their price despite nearly no change in the base design and yet an increasing market and cheaper components. Sad.
Crunching the night's XP for PC's and henchmen at the dinner table. That's about it.
I'm surprised nobody has posted this yet.
This statement is incorrect.
Most standardized tests where a graphing calculator would be useful, in fact require such a calculator. The current set of AP tests require/recommend a TI-84 or TI-85. The SAT itself highly recommends a graphic calculator.
Cool story. The SAT specifically does not allow calculators with a QWERTY keyboard. The TI-92 (the original one with the symbolic algebra solving system) had one and was, therefore, not allowed for the SAT. So, TI came out with the TI-89, which runs almost the exact same software as the TI-92, specifically so one could use an SAS-equipped calculator on the SAT. This is why the TI-89 is such an odd beast and somewhat harder to work with; the software was not really designed for that form-factor.
Students shouldn't be allowed to use things they don't understand. Calculators are for solving thousands of calculations and calculations with large numbers. Students should know how to do the same work by hand using smaller sets of calculations and smaller numbers.
If you don't understand the math, you won't be able to know if the answer your calculator gave you is right or how to find the problem if it's wrong.
It's not about making math "too easy." It's about actually understanding math. It's about learning how to actually solve problems and think logically. Just plugging it into a calculator doesn't teach you much. Any monkey can do that.
Work Safe Porn
A full CAS, the Ti-84 was a good calculator, I loved mine and it worked great. However it fell short for me because it lacked a good CAS, hence why I bought a Ti-89 Titanium. I know a lot of people, engineers included wonder why anyone would bother getting a calculator with a CAS built in, it's simple, why do algebra by hand and risk making a mistake when your calculator can do it MUCH faster, more accurate and in most cases with a better final answer.
Which is retarded. Why force a student to do hand driven math when most of the work they sit down and do is just repetitive steps that a computer can do in 1/5000th of the time. Well coming up with an equation is important and being able to visualize what your trying to solve is important, doing hand driven calculus isn't. There is no need for me sit here for two hours, reducing an equation only to have it in a form I can finally solve. My calculator should take the equation I came up with, reduce it for me and present me with a nice final state equation I can then solve.
I used an HP-48 during high school as did several friends (1992 or so). We all used the infrared data transfer to... help each other during tests (we aimed our calculators ).
The calculator was so new at the time that none of the teachers had any idea that this was possible.
I look back on the experience and don't consider it cheating, we primarily used it to transfer things that would otherwise need to be memorized (I used it in Poly-Sci for geography answers - no one questioned me having a calculator out...). Mathematical proofs and such were still required knowledge to be successful.
I'm quite proud of figuring this all out back in the day. Made school easier and taught me about wireless data transfer before it was a common thing.
that I cannot, for example, do with Maxima and octave on my Nexus 7, much more quickly and without that feeling of being trapped in the distant past?
Is that how long it has been since I was in high school?
Is it really cheating, or are their tests simply flawed? It sounds like their tests ask you to answer poorly-thought-out questions that don't actually test a student's critical thinking abilities. Probably the typical, "Here's an equation right in front of your face. Now mindlessly repeat those steps you should have memorized in class to solve the equation."
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Schools and tests. Even back before cellphones hit critical mass, using graphing calculators made life easier. Not just the graph, but having functions, program-ability, the history on a big screen, etc.
Now that cellphones are big... well schools still don't want them using the cellphones in class. Some don't even want them brought into the building. So you can't just allow students to just start using them in class.
Is he googling the answer?
Is he texting someone for help?
Is he using an advanced polynomial solver?
etc.
So, graphing calculators. And a specific kind to perhaps reduce how easy it is to program or the built in features. Heck, there was a TI out while I was a in college that would solve advanced equations and give you the answer as something like Answer = 2x + 1/Pi
I mean sure, pen and paper is fine. But some standardized tests are set up so you barely have time to take the test by plugging stuff into a calculator. And writing it all out and stuff adds a little bit more time and thus makes it hard to finish.
Dedicated keys.
While every calculator is a computer, not every computer is a calculator. Having dedicated keys helps streamline problem solving when all you have is graph paper and pencil.
But yeah, Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, Octave, Derive, Excel, have pretty much replaced calcs. I haven't used my HP48SX and HP48GX in years -- partially because of the emulator.
No these were just word problems constructed to make you use some specific formula. Memorizing dozens of them is pointless. In real life people lookup that kind of stuff everyday.
There was no critical thinking involved.
Oh, I totally agree. I can sort of understand the requirement for having some sort of calculating device that isn't also a smart phone, even though I think that cheaters eventually are going to suffer for the cheating.
I think that slide-rules should be brought back into the high school level. Some can be expensive, but not as much as a graphing calc and it's probably best to learn how to do the math with paper and pencil to really get the deeper understanding rather than "learn how to use the damn calculator first before you try and learn the damn math."
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
I believe the OP was referring to standardized tests. If memory serves, when I took the ACT graphing calculators were forbidden since you could easily store all manner of cheat sheets onboard.
If that's the case, it wasn't clear to me. So, yeah, I guess that's reasonable.
My other comment was to bring back use of a slide-rule and all of these particular technological issues regarding cheating all go away.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
emulate on an emulator. On your smartphone. Free and better.
And not allowed in the classroom settings that these things are mainly used. Too easy to switch to notes/google/more powerful apps.
It does highlight a major problem with our education system: the reason TI-84s cost so much is because they're required in so many high school math classes. As the summary states, they're antiquated and overpriced. Of course, the cost is negligible to middle class and well off families, so it's just one more factor that holds back those in poverty. Let's face it, there are a lot of bad parents out there who, given the choice between putting their child in a class that requires a $100 calculator and sticking them in Math-4-Dummies, they'll choose the latter.
It's a similar to the well known problem with textbooks.
In many ways this reminds me of the absurdly high price of a version of Microsoft Office. It could be sold at a profit at a fraction of the price it's currently at, but people 'need it' despite the fact that the functionality isn't unique or costly. Microsoft's lock-in is formats that don't play nice, Texas Instruments' lock-in is textbooks they've built relationships with and teachers who can't think outside the box.
Hopefully one day Sal Khan kills textbooks as we know them today and FOSS/ODF just flat out kills MS Office.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
it's called "tenure"
The same professors have been giving the same tests for so long, that the answers are still available on old tripod sites. They fear the internet, not because it would allow their students to cheat... their students cheat all the time... they fear the internet because it makes it obvious that every bit of knowledge required to pass their class can be contained on a single webpage.
Any class that's teaching you a skill that you're expected to use in the real world, should allow you to use all of the tools that will be available to you in the real world on the test. Doing away with the same test transcript they've been using for 40 years might make them miss their evening scotch once a quarter but it's a small price to pay don't you think?
Does it run blockdude?
I don't know about ACT, but the math sections of the SAT Reasoning Test require the student to provide a scientific or graphing calculator, and this graphing calculator cannot have a touch screen or QWERTY-arranged keyboard.
This is the biggest benefit I see. I still keep a (non-graphing) calculator on my desk for quick problems. It is cheap and reliable. I could use my phone or computer, but then you need to unlock it then find the calculator app.
I've never had any complaints with TI calculators. They would charge me more to put a color screen, or a touch screen, or whatever else on it. I don't need that stuff for math, so I don't want to pay for it. I have a TI-89 Titanium that got me through a mechanical engineering degree, and that I use every day at work. It's a rock solid calculator. I've never thought: "man I wish this had a touch screen..."
Common Sense (+1)
Graphing calculators are typically banned anyway.
The most you'll be taking a test with is a TI-30.
Do you have to bring the TI-30 inside its original vinyl blue-denim case? Looped through your belt?
Have a Day!
It is a similarly absurd situation to trying to teach Shakespeare in a language you don't understand. It's not going to work.
Is it like trying to teach the Bible if you aren't fluent in ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek?
Because the point is to learn the math? The coursework is not designed to teach you how to use a tool, it is to teach you how the underlying pieces work.
It is targeted at education and math teachers get all uppity if the calculator can do too much since they don't know how to effectively teach or test their students.
If you want CAS TI's color model is the nSpire CX CAS. More powerful overall and has a full CAS setup on it.
Since you mentioned it, what are the good calculator apps for smartphones? THey all seem to focus on a smaller subset of things, I'd like an HP48 or Ti89 replacement. Either that, or why not Mathematica or Maple or Derive on the iPhone?
Any suggestions?
I'm sure that this is true in many settings, but my Pre-Calculus I instructor at a community college allows me to use Algeo Calculator on my Nexus 7 for tests. This says a lot as he is older, and technically challenged. He made it clear what my limitations with the device are, thereby giving me enough rope to hang myself. I appreciate his trust, and will not take advantage of it.
My large screen, auto-scaling, color graphing and pinch zooming are envied by many of my fellow TI-using students.
We were being tested on solving a frigging problem, and not on whether we could retain by heart 100 of equation. We were being tested on understanding not tore memory. We could have books, lessons, anything. The math was usually simple enough anyway, approximated to the first number after comma. In the end we did not have all perfect note we had a gaussian around the middle, because the problem given were real world physic, chemistry and engineering problem that we had to solve and show our reasoning.
Who cares about rote memoring ? In real life you can look up any reference. The most interresting stuff is : can you look the correct reference up, do you udnerstand what you were taught, and can you on your own solve a problem.
After you are 7 or 8 year old any rote memory teaching is *lazy* and icnredibly backward in our world.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Some people like general tools that can do everything mostly well, some people like specialized tools that are designed around doing one thing, it is an old preference argument.
Though setting aside that, one thing people like about these dedicated devices the physical keys and large amount of space devoted to them. A smartphone (assuming one even has one. geeks consider them universal, but they really are not) will generally provide a smaller UI (display + input) and input has no tactile feedback.
As for laptops, that gets into the whole 'computers in the classroom' argument, which has been well covered on slashdot.
target markets have never meant much to geeks
Unless the target market ends up not big enough, in which case the product never gets mass-produced or falls out of production because not enough people want it. This happened to 4" tablets priced for use without a cellular data plan (such as the Nokia N810 in North America and the three years of Android prior to Galaxy Player introduction in October 2011), it happened to 3-4" tablets with a gamepad (such as GP2X), and it happened to 10" laptops at the end of last year.
Many of us geeks have gone on to sire progeny
You must be new here.
But seriously, you're right that many Slashdot users have younger relatives in their mid-teens, such as my younger cousin. So we have your anecdote and my anecdote, and the plural of "anecdote" is "data".
Have you found a decent Android calculator app? I'm currently using "Scientific Calculator" by Rohan Laishram, but it has annoying syntax issues (like opening parentheses that need to be manually closed for certain operations and throwing a syntax error if you don't close them)...
When I was in high school and college, we were permitted to use these types of calculators (in my case the HP 48G back in the late 80's early 90's.. I forget exactly when), however the teacher would walk around to each persons desk and hold in the factory reset button, and remove any mem cards (the PSION my friend used to have).
There was never any need to store formulas or anything, as those were provided on a separate sheet in addition to the test questions and answer paper (okay.. it was a huge sheet that included pretty much every formula used in science, math, chemistry, electrical and mechanical eng, so if you did not already know the formula, you would not be able to pick it out of the list anyways.. or rarely)
This was in South Africa many years ago.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Are we paying for buttons here?
You're paying for buttons because SAT and ACT demand buttons. It's like the handheld video game market, where the developer pays for buttons by navigating the developer and game approval of Sony (PSP/PS Vita) and Nintendo (DS/3DS) for games in genres that aren't very suitable for a phone's touch screen.
Because teachers are paranoid the chill'ins will cheat in class. Anything with a radio is verboten as a matter of course, and likewise anything "too powerful" isn't allowed. Finagle forbid they actually spend braincycles on solving a problem and leave the arithmetic to something that's designed to crunch numbers quickly and correctly. Far better to keep them busy doing busy work.
The way it would work if they had more powerful devices is that one kid would write a program and the rest of the kids would get him to give or sell it to them. Unfortunately, kids still cheat today, by any means available. My H.S. daughter has regaled me with a few of the attempts she's seen.
Also, great story about the prisms!
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
We used them when I was teaching introductory calculus as a grad student in the 90's.
A smartphone's certainly capable enough, but I can still think of a number of advantages to a special-purpose calculator:
But sure maybe some day it will make sense to require everyone to have a phone and standardize on some single calculator app.
Is it to hard to come up with Android ROM to kill this thing once and for all. The kind of battery life this has can be easily had on a Nexus 7.
Put in a custom graphic calculator ROM and let TI RIP.
I realize there may not be such a ROM and the fact its highschool kids who use it, its unlikely a group with capability to actually customize such a ROM will ever do so.
Is it really cheating, or are their tests simply flawed? It sounds like their tests ask you to answer poorly-thought-out questions that don't actually test a student's critical thinking abilities. Probably the typical, "Here's an equation right in front of your face. Now mindlessly repeat those steps you should have memorized in class to solve the equation."
When I went to college, many courses had a final exam with a "you can take one A4 sheet with whatever cheat sheet you want to scribble down for yourself" policy. If you hadn't known what you were doing, it wouldn't have saved you anyway.
Memorizing formulas is the easy part of learning anything, I don't know why that's the thing some students obsess about, and as a teacher I'd be concerned about students not memorizing things they probably should, but it's not the end of the world.
It's when they start trying to message someone to get help that I'd get really worried.... It's not likely to work as well as they think it will, but I still wouldn't want to have to deal with it.
My TI-82 was definitely not allowed during the SATs.
Which you can do with a graphing calculator as well. You just don't have access to the internet. In some cases you can upload flash cards to them though.
I've taught introductory calculus and we definitely didn't reuse exams.
There are some things you need to be able to have at your fingertips without having to google for them each time.
But even that aside, my big worry wouldn't be that they didn't memorize the quadratic formula or something, it'd be that they paid somebody to go sit on the other side of a chat session and coach them through the test. At that point we're really not testing the student any more.
As the article indicated, we've had the TI-82/83/84 for the better part of two decades. Educational institutions and teachers know how to make it work for what they want it to do in a classroom. I personally don't know anyone that's purchased a graphing calculator for something other than a math class, so I have to assume education is a very large segment of the graphing calculator market share. Personally, I don't see anyone being exceptionally compelled to change their curriculum away from the TI-8X, and since many courses require that you have a TI calculator, the review is probably moot for a percentage of the market numbering in the high nineties.
Because a calculator won't tell you if you've gotten the wrong answer or give you a way of verifying that the answer is correct?
Yes, it will give you an answer, but without knowing how it got the answer, you have no way of knowing if the answer makes sense. If you do it out by hand, you can trace the steps and see if there was a mistake at some point and correct it if applicable.
Most schools I've been to that require those calculators, have some for loan or rent. The college my mother works at rents them out for about $10 a term. Which for most students is cheaper than buying their own. It's not until you get past calculus that they'll usually let you use a TI-89.
I still have, on my desk at work, my HP41CV. I have had it rebuilt once, and it can be a pain to find N cells for it. I also have a perfect emulator on my iPhone, with the roms (warts and all), but 9 time out of 10, I unzip the case and fire up the HP41CV.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
SAT and AP exams, as well as all AP in-class tests, allowed TI-82/83/89s.
The 89 MIGHT have been banned on one or two of those, owing to its ability to factor algebraic expressions and to perform integration / differentiation.
I use RealCalc by Quartic Software.
I tried many free calculators, but this one was so good I bought the paid version for a few bucks. Damn handy to have.
Yes, so teach it once, maybe twice and then use the right tool for the job! Sure I can sit here and work out some super nasty and ugly complex equation, or I could enter the starting EQU into my Ti-89, press enter and see the final form.
You use the calculator to skip the manual steps. The error is mostly going to come from entering the wrong starting equation or you telling the calculator the wrong information. I'm only saying that you should use it to do to the brute force work, after that just enter you data and get the answer.
The most difficult math course I ever took was my first college math course, Calc II with Maple. Why yes, use of the symbolic calculus program Maple was so important to the class it was in the name. We took our tests at a workstation with Maple on it.
When my adviser suggested I take this version instead of normal Calc II, I didn't hesitate because I naively assumed this would make the class easier.
Turns out that when you remove the time it takes to do the actual mechanics of taking integrals and derivatives, you can instead focus on problems where the difficulty is figuring out how to set up that integral and derivative. Which is much harder than following some rules by rote.
That's why Feynman Diagrams were such a big deal -- they actually allowed physicists to figure out how they should be applying the equations of quantum mechanics to a specific problem. It let them figure out what to calculate. How wasn't the challenge.
The enemies of Democracy are
For this price you can get a 7" Android tablet and buy a graphing calculator program for $5 or so. Hell, Wolfram Alpha will even show you calculus solutions step by step. TI really does not deserve to be in business at this point.
Because the point is to learn the math? The coursework is not designed to teach you how to use a tool, it is to teach you how the underlying pieces work.
Then they should be asking essay questions instead. Ask the student to describe how the underlying principles work.
It's ridiculous to throw a bunch of equations at the student and then say "no, you can't use the easiest and most obvious way of solving these, the method that everyone would use in the real world."
Thus at 14, I learned that school was not necessarily about learning.
That's a little late to learn that lesson, don't you think?
Graphing calculators are typically banned anyway.
There was a time when this was true. Now most high school and college level classes actually require them (in the U.S. anyway). And before you start bad-mouthing the current generation for how easy they have it, keep in mind that the courses have gotten appropriately harder too. You wouldn't believe how much complex graphing now goes on in even a basic algebra class compared to back in the day, when everything was still done by hand.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
The real question is why "offtopic" instead of "troll".
Does anyone really think "Does (some TI calculator) support RPN?" after 40+ years of HP using RPN and TI using standard notation could be anything but an attempt to wind up the tired postfix vs infix debate?
0 1 - just my two bits
I bought real calc too, but it has problems with longer calculations with many different steps. I get the feeling that it doesn't quite follow the order of operations properly... I was hoping for something along the lines of a standard Casio 2 line scientific calculator.
15MHz Z80, and a 320x240 16-bit screen. Drawing to that screen has got to be slow.
Copying bytes from memory to an IO port is 24 cycles per byte on the usual code (ld a,(hl) \ out (n),a \ inc hl)
The screen itself is 153,600 bytes large.
So it takes more than 3,686,400 clocks to output an entire screen image, most likely a lot more time. This suggests the entire screen can be updated 4 times per second with unrolled code, and that's not counting the code needed to set up and get ready to output data to the screen, or generate said data. More realistically, the screen could be updated updated 3 times per second.
For things like solid color fills, probably much faster, possibly as high as 8FPS.
First I would learn how to solve the problem on paper. Then I would learn how to solve the problem given a generic set of input. Then I would write a program to do it on the calculator.
Thus at 14, I learned that school was not necessarily about learning.
Seems like you did a lot of learning to me...
The bunch of equations that are thrown at the students are essay questions. Just because it says solve for X doesn't mean you are expected to give no more than the value of X. It usually means you are expected to show how X is obtained via your working (i.e. your essay in mathematical syntax). When I did math exams just giving the numerical value of the final answer to a question was usually marked incorrect since there was no evidence it was any different from a lucky guess.
I had a self-made circular slide rule in high school, then got a real one for college, just for the heck of it. Way easier to use than the linear one, IMHO. The self made one was, um, interestingly made. I scribed it on stainless steel, but based on a divider plotted on A3 paper using a Roland flat bed plotter. I think I wrote a QuickBasic program to generate the HPGL for the divider.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I was just happy that my professor let me use my TI BA-20 calculator on my last test. I figured it would give me an edge over all the kids using a TI-89. (Yes I did actually use that on my last test, granted it was only college algebra and it was so many years since I've had to use my graphing calculator that I just grabbed what was available as I couldn't find mine.)
This is the post of the day for me. Couldn't agree more!
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ab.x48&hl=en
http://www.mksg.de/
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
RTFA: "TI claims that the battery is good for about a week of in-class use or 2 weeks of homework, and my unit seemed to last around 8-10 hours of use on a charge (in a very unscientific test)."
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I had a professor once who liked giving 'test of twos'. You knew ahead of time that the answer to every single question was '2', thus showing your work was what was important.
Yep, toughest tests I ever took were take-home tests for a differential equations class I had. All essay questions that you had to know how the equations applied in each instance. Did you no good to look anything up if you couldn't figure out which ones applied. A 50% got you an A in that class.
Always dreaded take-home tests after that.
1. Tactile keys are far superior to touchscreens in just about every way. You don't have to hit a key multiple times for it to register, they work with gloves, you don't smudge your screen, they're cheaper, etc.
2. Cost. People balk at the $120 price tag of a calculator and, as you have done, suggest using a smartphone app. Do you have any idea what a smartphone costs? About $600. It's only "cheap" if you also purchase a long contract with the phone which costs even more money. This argument also applies to laptops which, in addition to being more expensive, require the purchase of an operating system and mathematics software such as mathematica. (NOTE: I admit that there may be free alternatives for these.)
3. Durability. Some engineers have to run equations in the field. Laptops aren't durable enough and neither are smartphones. You can drop a calculator onto concrete from waist height and it might have a scratch or two, but it'll work just fine. Try that with a smartphone or laptop and you're liable to destroy the entire unit in spectacular fashion.
4. Battery life. Although the TI-84 COLOR seems to have absolutely shit battery life all other models have very good battery life. The TI-83, TI-84, and TI-89 will all last months of use on a single set of batteries (4 AAA batteries). Furthermore, the batteries are replaceable. You can simply swap them out if they die. Laptops and smartphones require that you sit them down next to an outlet for an hour or more in order to charge them. (Yes, laptops can use interchangeable batteries, but they cost about $80 each.)
5. Ease of use. A calculator requires that you turn it on before you can use it. It never needs updating, it never complains about software problems, it never requires any maintenance. Smartphones require regular software updates. Laptops require lots of software updates and other maintenance.
Note: I didn't mention their use in standardized testing. I find the argument that something is desirable because it's highly limited to be very silly. However, even after discounting this argument I have still provided at least 5 good reasons for calculator use. People who claim that calculators have no advantages other than being highly restricted are simply fooling themselves and ignoring reality. Are calculators good for ALL uses? No, of course not. There are many jobs and situations in which one will always have access to computer software or where one will require the additional power of computer software. It's just silly to claim that calculators are worthless because some people happen to be in the situation of having to use computer software.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
>Memorizing formulas is the easy part of learning anything,
Clearly, you've never tried to major in engineering.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
That's genius. Must be a pain to grade though.
The default calculator for Cyanogenmod is surprisingly good, like all of the default apps on it. Interestingly, it can do 2x2 matrix operations as well. (Although it isn't a replacement for a hardcore graphing/scientific calculator.)
I am current generation. They were banned in every serious high level math class I've taken thus far.
They were allowed in highschool but my highschool calc class was a joke. I didn't even use anything more than a four function calculator. Since then I've been using my calculator progressively less.
I guess my daughter's math classes (AP math and AP statistics) are outliers then. They're all required to use a TI-84/85.
Your experience might differ from mine, but I was generally allowed to use graphing calculators, on any test where using a calculator would have been reasonable (obviously, no graphing calculator to take a history exam, or biology test, where there is no math work). In the vast majority of cases where I couldn't use one, non-graphing calculators were similarly restricted.
And they were still useful as a visual aid, even if a simpler calculator had to be used on the test; it was convenient to be allowed to use a graphing calculator, however, and if you actually needed the CAS or graphing functionality as a crutch, and couldn't otherwise work the problem, it would be likely that you run out of time, or lose most points by failing to show the complete derivation for the right answer (can't just punch Factor(), Solve(), Integrate(), or Simplify() into a CAS, and then write the answer on your test, because you get basically no credit, as a result of failing to show how you arrived at that -- the steps, and correct interpretation of the problem were very often held to be just as important or more than winding up with the most perfect formulation of an answer).
I used a TI-83 throughout grade school starting with Algebra I, and half of high school, then a TI-92 from Junior year of high school after finishing Algebra II (in other words, through Trig and High school calculus), and then through college...
And I took many tests with these, and their advanced functionality was meaningfully useful in some cases.
I was not hindered by restrictions on graphing calculators, with the following exceptions 1. Standardized tests, And NON-Math classes that required math.
That's right.... no issues using a graphing calculator in any math class throughought my schooling, it was always allowed to have any TI graphing calculator, and normally for any particular class -- the policy would be the same for all tests (Eg; whether calc allowed or not for a class would not vary from test to test), with the sole exception of 1 term of grade school Algebra, where calculators were restricted to 4-function or banned completely on certain tests ---- all kinds of calculators were always allowed to bring into class and to do homework with, it was only TEST events that were standardized by a testing organization, or certain non-Math classes that I ever found to be restricted:
* I was a computer science scientific computing; for the most part, calculators of any kind were not allowed in any college computer science class tests, even when there were questions involving number crunching. (graphics calcs on equal footing)
* In several electrical engineering classes, there was also some big time number crunching, and no kind of calculator at all was allowed. (graphics calcs on equal footing)
* In college Physics II, only a basic scientific calculator was allowed, no graphing calculators.
* On the ACT/SAT tests; the TI-92 was allowed. The problem was not that it was a graphing calculator, however, the TI-83 was allowed. Apparently the test administrators are concerned about a calculator having a qwerty keyboard, so I could use my old TI83. The TI89 has similar functionality, and would likely not have been an issue (the TI92 just stands out).
* In high school chemistry; at first, at first only a 4-function calculator was allowed on the test -- this was not per-se a school policy, but an individual teacher's personal decision to disallow.
Later during the term, use of the TI-83 or TI-92 were allowed, as long as we could demonstrate to the teacher, that we had completely erased the calculator's memory, so that we could not have stored formulas or notes..
Of course, many of us were well familiar with calculator TIbasic programming, and hesitant to do that, then, and lose all the custom programs we had written...
Certain graphing calculators are allowed on the ACT, such as the TI83. The TI92 is banned on the ACT and the SAT. The TI89 is I believe currently banned on the ACT, but not the SAT.
All calculators with computer algebra system (CAS) functionality are now banned on the ACT.
But graphing capabilities are allowed.
The calculators have memory capabilities, but I believe, it is against the rules of the ACT, for you to bring in and utilize notes, formulas, or pre-made programs that you stored on it outside the test room during the testing time.
Or are they still using weak easily-cracked RSA keys? (the only purpose of which is to allow TI to say to schools and teachers and exam boards and stuff that their calculators are protected against "hacking" by kids trying to cheat on the math tests)
This. Exactly. Dedicated keys.
My HP 32 sits next to me on the desk, ready at an instant to answer questions like what is 1.83mm in inches, or what is the square root of 50. Much faster than pulling up an app on the tablet or smartphone, and much less wasteful of battery power.
What I haven't used in years is the programming functionality of the calculator. That's where Octave and other PC applications now shine.
In Singapore schools that are equivalent to US high schools, the graphics calculator is an essential tool to solve examination questions.
I recall each question being fairly short in how much work it took, so in general it was fairly obvious if the student knew what they were doing or not. But yeah, compared to being able to just see if their final answer matches a key, harder to grade.
I've been getting along fine using a duo of TI-83 and TI-36XPro . My Calculus instructors were impressed that the combination offers the functionality of a TI-80somethingorother (86?) but about $50 cheaper. Additionally, you end up with two screens and two calculators capable of performing integrals, so it's a good choice for multitaskers as well.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
First-semester physics and you can't quickly produce the basic equations for acceleration, momentum, kinetic energy? Learning to do symbolic differentiation and don't know the product rule? I think you likely have a problem.
Point taken that you don't necessarily have to sit down and memorize them (I never did), though I think there's no harm in doing that and it might help. I'd agree that not knowing them is more a symptom than a cause. But it's a potentially serious symptom: if you're approaching the exam and don't know the product rule, I'd rather the message be "you've got a problem and need a lot more practice", not "don't worry, you can look it up someplace".
But again the real problem with internet-connected devices in exams isn't their use as a reference but as a person-to-person communication device. The exam *does* need to test the student, not somebody else....
> Microsoft's lock-in is formats that don't play nice,
Why are we blaming the formats? It's Microsoft that doesn't play nice.
Luckily where I'm attending college, there was a pre-existing expectation that some students will be using Open Office. OO is installed on library and lab computers. Open format handling is already integrated with "Explorer". One instructor had trouble opening an open format essay, I got extra time to hand in a print-out instead.
I've also found that this "Texas Instruments makes people use their calculators" (not that you've said so, but numerous others here have) just doesn't hold true.
I didn't advance very far in math in H.S. so I've been running the gamut from College Algebra to Calculus II. I've used the same TI-83 the whole way, but started supplementing it with lower end calculators along the way, at first the TI-30XS MultiView for the "MathPrint" but now (with the TI-36xPro) for thing like the pi/e/i button and differentials.
Along the way, I've looked many times over to the Casio alternatives and decided to stay away because the instructors said they'll be teaching the needed button-pressing in terms of using a TI model. However, no instructor at any time said I couldn't use a Casio, just that "you'll have to learn to operate it yourself".
If I recall, this was the attitude twenty years ago when I was in High School, as well. I personally doubt the quality of education in a school that requires a specific brand of calculator. I imagine that the instructor is incapable of doing the work without one, and worse, that the instructor would be lost if they had to use another brand of calculator, not cognitively knowing what they're doing with the calculator so much as just parroting "steps".
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Notably, the TI-36Pro will solve a derivative given a specific value of X, or an integral given a specific interval, but neither will produce the output formula of a derivative or anti-derivative, and the answers produced aren't always in exact form either.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
As a calculator it did all I need.
As a computer none of the durn things including my wonderful HP-41 did the job that can be done with Python.
Sadly the world of calculators if full of mandates that center around standardized tests and classroom arithmetic. This will clog the pipe and remove innovation for decades more.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Thanks. Last time I related that story, someone just couldn't believe that a class was harder with Maple doing the grunt work. They assumed I just hadn't taken much math so it was the hardest by default. Then tried to impress me with their standard engineering math curriculum.
The enemies of Democracy are
The hardest math courses I ever took was a series of hardcore numerical methods served by the math department, taught by a dyed-in-the-wool math professor who did know his math. You had as much materials available as you wanted to, and no exams -- just homework. I think 50% of the homework got you an A. The homework was easily 20 hours per week if you wanted it to be presentable and really something worth putting your name on. It was all about just getting the computations done, there was very little grunt style of theory -- it was all about analyzing the performance of the code as you implemented it, and getting it where it had to be. Of course you had to put down some equations to show why the code was performing the way it did, but that was really minor. Just applying the relatively simple math was lots of hard work -- I had an undergrad numerical methods course and it was a joke in comparison. I then took finite element modelling and had a good laugh at how they ignored the numerical stability aspects, and pretty much went with whatever Ansys had spat out. When you get to the nitty-gritty, applied math is hard. It's nothing like the purely theoretical pen-and-paper, armchair stuff some people excel at.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Yup, some of those old calcs have fantastic battery life.
My HP48SX would last a year on 3 AA batteries (a month with rechargeables.) Its "Saturn" CPU is a 64-bit CPU too ! Sadly almost everyone doesn't prioritize battery life anymore.