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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.
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.
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.
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."
It's an update of a classic gadget that a lot of /.ers would have used. Geeks get nostalgic about gadgets, that's why it belongs here.
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
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 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.
Unfortunately, there's this thing called the "College Board". They make the SATs.
When did they start allowing the use of calculators during the SAT? I suppose about the same time that you could get a "perfect" score while still having some wrong or unanswered questions. OK...some Googling has shown my guess is correct, and also given me the conversions, so now I know what to tell young people if they ask what score I got.
Oblig: get off my lawn