Slashdot Mirror
How the Outdated TI-84 Plus Still Holds a Monopoly On Classrooms
theodp (442580) writes Electronics almost universally become cheaper over time, but with essentially a monopoly on graphing calculator usage in classrooms, Texas Instruments still manages to command a premium for its TI-84 Plus. Texas Instruments released the TI-84 Plus graphing calculator in 2004. Ten years later, the base model still has 480 kilobytes of ROM and 24 kilobytes of RAM, its black-and-white screen remains 96×64 pixels, and the MSRP is still $150. "Free graphing calculator apps are available," notes Matt McFarland. "But smartphones can't be used on standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT. Schools are understandably reluctant to let them be used in classrooms, where students may opt to tune out in class and instead text friends or play games. So for now, overpriced hardware and all, the TI-84 family of calculators remains on top and unlikely to go anywhere." So, to paraphrase Prof. Norm Matloff, is it stupid to buy expensive TI-8x milk when the R cow is free?
The TI-8x calculators are not outdated; they do exactly what they need to do -- no more, no less. This is an important fact! If they did much more they wouldn't be allowed to be used; if they did much less they wouldn't be useful.
However, that's not an excuse for them continuing to cost $100+. There should have been an opportunity for some competitor (e.g. Casio or HP) to use 2014 technology to deliver the same capabilities with less manufacturing complexity and thus a cheaper price. Apparently, Casio is trying this, but they're not being aggressive enough: if Casio beat teachers and parents over the head with how cheap calculators should be by selling theirs for $25 or so, then IMO they'd be more successful.
IMO, a worthy "update" to a TI graphing calculator would not be more RAM or a faster CPU, it would be power envelope improvements so it could run on solar (like a 4-function calculator can) and a slimmer, lighter body. (Of course, these days I just use a TI-89 emulator on my Android cellphone instead, so I'm not the target market...)
Incidentally, the other thing I don't understand about this is why anybody picks a TI-84 when they could have a TI-86. TI-89s are prohibited for standardized tests (because they have a Computer Algebra System), but TI-86s aren't and are better than TI-84s in every other way as far as I can tell...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Technically, the Ti-84 is a beefed up Ti-82, which has been around since 93.
Hell it's outlasted even Ti's more capable Calculators like the Ti-85/6 and the Ti-92/89 (The 89ti is being sold for now, but it's days are numbered.)
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
The problem with different venders is they would have a different procedure to do different things. They want everyone to have the same one so they only have to explain it once. I agree with you that it does what it does and why and that the price is out of control. Not that they need something more. I still have my ti-82 on the shelf... hah
All smart phones should have an exam mode. Using a public key infrastructure, the phone presents a blank desktop with approved apps downloaded from the schools's wifi network.
The phone can't be used for anything else whilst in this mode and all control resides with the school.
A common standard would speed adoption.
They're not overpriced: TI knows students are forced to use them so they feel no need to lower their price. 150$ is within reach of many families and should they cost more that would force the issue. It's called free market: demand sets the price. Suck it up.
They could still use hardware updates like a full LCD color screen with a much higher resolution.
So, to paraphrase Prof. Norm Matloff, is it stupid to buy expensive TI-8x milk when the R cow is free?
I don't know much about cows or milk, but if we could figure out a way to teach our kids R instead of how to use a TI-8x that they'll never touch again after graduation, we would be doing them a huge service.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Forget the 86, the NSPIRE is allowed on all major standardized tests and it's worlds better than any of the 8x calcs, and the CAS model is allowed on everything but the IB and ACT (and honestly unless you can't get a decent score on the SAT or live in a state that requires the ACT for instate scholarships there's not a ton of reason to take it). It's what I bought my son, I figured why waste $150 on an ancient platform that won't help him much in his last 2 years of high school math when I could spend $125 on the black and white NSPIRE CAS and he'd be set for his entire academic career.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I bought my HP48SX in 1990. I wish they still made them, because I've finally worn out some of the buttons. QQ
I tried whatever "spiritual successor" to the HP48 model came out in the early 2000s. It might have been the HP49? That thing sucked donkey balls, and I returned it because my 48SX was still better.
Aside from RPN, the most important feature for a calculator is how the buttons feel. I'm not interested in squishy keys. I want pop. Can anyone tell me how the HP50 series compares to the HP48 in that regard?
"They want everyone to have the same one so they only have to explain it once."
Then the schools can damn well buy the calculators for their students.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The TI-83/84 is used not because it's superior, but because that's the calculator all of the high-school math books have the buttons shown for. The schools do not teach high-level understanding of how the calculator books, they show push this button, and then this button. Teachers do not have the time to figure out and explain every student's calculator, so they all require TI-83/84 for consistency.
It looks like they discontinued the TI-86 the same year they introduced the TI-84.
The thing I don't understand is why they don't remove the evaluation part from the standardized tests.
Entering the numbers into the calculator and pressing enter isn't a complex task, there is no need for that to be part of the test.
Let the student present the expression he/she would have entered into the calculator and let that be the final answer.
For everything but the standardized tests the students can use a graphing calculator app that is available for their smartphone.
The need for everyone to buy a TI-calculator disappears and perhaps then TI will be more interested in reducing the cost so that the students that can't afford a smartphone at least can buy a calculator.
At the moment the standardized tests are just a way to subsidize Texas Instruments.
Andi Graph is the bomb... you can switch between any TI-8x ROMs. The only thing I miss about it is the tactile keys.
I own a TI-85. Therefore, I have no remorse about using the TI-85 ROM on my Android devices, as I'm not letting anyone use my calculator at the same time. I paid for the software.
In conjunction with BlueStacks on my Samsung ATIV Pro 900T, I can even project and take screenshots of the whole calculator without any special TI hardware.
https://play.google.com/store/...
Ti has the market because it has designed a good calculator not for general use, but for test use. The limited function makes it a bad calculator compared to the HP 49g, but I would hate to have to use my HP for a test written assuming a TI.
As tests move from paper based to computer based, I suspect the testing software will include a calculator and students will probably be moved to a similar calculator downloaded to their phone or tablet. I suspect the some College Board tests may still have require an external calculator, so TI is not in danger of losing all sales immediately. The TI is a really good machine,and they are the granddaddy of the pocket calculator, having developed the device to use their new electronics that did not at the time have a market. Interesting bit of trivia. On a College Board test a while back one of the questions put the TI into a thrashing state. You could have two calculators on the test, and if you did you could work on the second while the first finished. If you did not, well, you were screwed.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
And I am sure competitors exist, but schools only allow the TI's. It is the same for old standard calculators, the university/college will only approve the use of that one TI calculator. In my university, you have one allowed calculator, and you still had to pay to get a sticker to let the exam procs know that "yes, this calculator is allowed"
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Not "all" standardized tests. Definitely not on the major engineering exams where only nonprogrammable calcs are allowed, and eevn then they have a specific (and short) list of the calculators allowed.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
It's called a monopoly: the vendor sets the price.
FTFY
The thing I don't understand is why they don't remove the evaluation part from the standardized tests.
Probably something to do with huggy-feely politicking. Curricula are still made up out of too much wishful thinking.
I'd agree that teaching math would beat teaching pushing buttons, but the latter is easier for quicker results and so cheaper.
For everything but the standardized tests the students can use a graphing calculator app that is available for their smartphone.
This won't fly, for a number of reasons all having to do with who controls the device, both officially and in practice.
It's simple. They are allowed on tests. Teachers stock them because they can be used on the tests their students need to take. And then every parent wants to get whatever the teacher is using so that their child can get the most help from the teacher.
I teach physics, and there's no way I would ever allow a student to use anything except a scientific calculator in my class during an exam. They'll be googling the text book as soon as they think my back is turned, or texting friends in other classes for answers.
Granted, they don't need a fancy $150 calculator, anything that can do a sin()/cos() is sufficient [I still use my TI-55III from 1986], but anything except a real calculator would give those students an unfair advantage.
-JS
P.S. Lest anyone thing this doesn't happen, I catch at least one student a year trying to cheat with a phone on the pretext that it's a calculator (so if it's just a calculator, why do you keep switching apps when you think I'm not looking?)
I don't think anyone is saying that TI-8X's don't do everything they need to, but with how inexpensive electronics have become it is laughable that Texas Instruments still charges $150 for them. When you can get a basic tablet for $50-100, if a company went further they could probably simplify a cheap tablet even more (remove wi-fi, audio systems, etc), slap some graphics calculator software on it and sell it for less than half of what the TI-8X's go for and probably have more functionality.
The TI-8x line uses all Z80 derived CPU's. So they're very hackable.
But the other thing about the TI-8x line is if you take a short amount of time you realize you can program the hell out of it. So if for example you're required to memorize formulas, just program them in.
That said - a simple solution to breaking the monopoly would be a rule that during tests all cell phones are in airplane mode. Problem solved.
Why not design the test so that it doesn't require anything beyond math/trig functions? I passed the Professional Engineer exam about 15 years ago with a TI-30X (and a slide rule for backup, in case both calculators failed). It's a seriously difficult test, but no "calculating" is required that a standard scientific/non-graphing/non-equation solving calculator can't do. Sketching a graph is something you should be able to do by inspection, not by plugging the equation into your calculator. Calculating mean and standard deviation is just busywork if there's more than a half dozen numbers in the set. etc.
The *only* use? I completely disagree as an engineer. I have all kinds of "big boy" computational tools at my disposal, but at least once I day I turn on my TI-89 and use it for something. It might just be multiplying a couple numbers, or a square root, or whatever, but it works faster than starting up MATLAB or R to do it or trying to use the terrible windows calculator.
I don't know that I would buy one if I didn't already have it from school years and years ago, but it still works and it's my first instinct when I'm working on something that requires a quick answer but doesn't require more than one or two calculations to get there.
Now that said, I don't ever use any of the graphing functionality. Just the basic math, trig, *maybe* solving for a variable in a simple system.
-Ted http://www.freemathhelp.com/
when the R cow is free?
Why use a convoluted language like R when you can use Python?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
At one point, there really was no powerful analog for a graphic calculator on Linux, I mean one with the same user interface with all of the easy to access buttons that such a calculator has through the GUI. That may be the case still. Anyone have any recommendations on a Linux application that could completely replace all of the functionality of the TI-84, in functionality and user interface?
Or if a competitor made such a hypothetical $25 replacement for the TI-84/86, schools could just standardize on the new model. The argument for not switching to Casio, etc. right now is that younger siblings typically get their older siblings hand-me-downs, but if the replacement model was only $25, that argument would loose a lot of weight.
Although with the Ti's current tenure, they're now getting into the range where there's likely students using their grandfather's hand-me-down calculator in class. I know students were using their parent's hand-me-down Ti calculators when I was in school.... and I'm old enough now to have kids of my own in school
Spot on, except the TI-86 has been out of production for a number of years. Presumably their market niche was too small.
From what I've read, Casios /are/ a lot cheaper than equivalent TIs, but they are different enough to need retraining and there are many more textbooks that assume a student has a TI.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Don't forget, in some places the better graphical calculators (like ti86 and ti89) are banned from high school level exams, because their ability to find roots for high level polynomials, do series expansion, symbolic solving etc.
It goes back even further for me. I had to buy a TI-81 in 1990 for freshman year in college. Then I had to take a class (Math 148), that despite its description, was really just to teach you how to use the TI-81. In the two subsequent classes (Math 150 and 151), we barely used the TI-81 for much more than basic calculator functions that I recall, although that was a long time ago. Of course, I never used the calculator again after that. I came away from the whole experience feeling like it was scheme cooked up between the university, TI, and the book publisher.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
This is a good example of the fact that all products live in an ecosytem, and the brilliance of TI was at least as much in marketing and sales as in technology. This is a great example of "stickiness" of a prouct and the retuns a company can acheive by getting products adopted as standards. These calculators are still a good fit, becuase they don't do too much. The challenge for everyone (TI included) is how to avoid being frozen here forever. TI has put out more powerful calculators, but the gatekeeps (teachers, standardized test administrators) have not accepted them (and from their points of view, for good reasons).
But then you'd need to include a Li-ion battery because those screens chew through AAs like no-one's business. Students, who basically throw the calculator in the bag after they've done their homework would forget to get it charged, would then no longer have the option of asking teacher for some spare batteries and would need to work chained to a wall-wart.
"How the outdated hammer still holds a monopoly on garages" What makes it outdated? It does everything it needs to do without being bloated. Not everything has to have a touch screen and wi-fi, you know.
I never understood why a graphical calculator is needed in school. We had them too in 10th and 11th class. It brought me pretty much nothing. Plus I was already used to RPN at the time, so I hate the TI calculators. It would have been a fail investment had I bought one. It was our luck that the things were part of the school material and not our own.
In my opinion, graphical calculators do not belongs in school classes any more than smartphones. It's really not the way to go to promote understanding of concepts, which is as important as learning concepts. The understanding part seems to be systematically ignored by the school system... and its getting worse with every modernisation of schools (at least from what I saw in two different countries where I lived).
But I doubt I'm the right person to ask; I have a rather odd view of this on this topic. I would go as far as to suggest to ban calculators from engineering schools and re-establish the use of slide rule. At least students would perhaps regain some notions of order of magnitude and intuition for it.
Couldn't schools keep a supply of TIs on-hand and rent/lend them to students for the school year? I'd be surprised if this wasn't already being done somewhere.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Never had to buy a TI-84, but this (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Bisha.TI89EmuDonation&hl=en) looks interesting, and is far cheaper ($3.74 CAD).
Then what we need is a group of mathematicians to get together and come up with a standard, just as we have the IEEE give us so many IT standards.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Never in high school was a calculator allowed on any math tests. All problems were written to be solvable without a calculator, and they were plenty challenging. And this way, the students were pretty confident when they were going astray on an answer, since most everything wound up being a whole number, basic fraction, or one of the more common irrationals. I graduated High School is 2001 from a public school as well.
Whats more important is that they taught is math, not how to use a calculator. How to use a calculator changes with the calculator, and isn't a particularly valuable skill to learn compared to the fundamentals of calculus and the other higher math. Yes, I almost never do math anymore by hand, I write a program for it, but learning all those fundamental rules about the quadratic equation, even those weird trig substitution formulas come in handy once in a while when solving a weird problem.
Calculators aren't necessary in high school mathematics, and should not be used.
Now for chemistry and physics I can't see no calculator simply because the numbers are so unwieldy most of the time, but I think there is a way to write a test that does not require a calculator.
TI-8x calculators were standardized by the educrats a way-long time ago, and will remain the same forever more because bureaucracies view change as dangerous and move to stifle it. The American education system is a multi-hundred billion dollar monster, that's a lot of ability to stifle things.
Texas Instruments obviously understands this, and so they do not innovate in their calculator lines. Because innovation is -bad- in Education Land.
The next standard will possibly be the iPad. Then Apple will have an Iron Rice Bowl too. How nice.
Did something change? I took the EIT back in the 90s and the very programmable HP-48G was allowed.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The TI-8x calculators are not outdated; they do exactly what they need to do -- no more, no less.
That doesn't mean they do it in the best possible way. I could do calculations on an Apple ][ back in the 1980s but that doesn't mean the state of the art stopped there. Sure they get the job done but that doesn't mean they couldn't make further improvements. I have a hard time believing that the perfect calculator was developed back when I was still in school 25+ years ago.
I disagree that they are not outdated. Are you seriously going to argue that they couldn't have made any improvements to the interface, power, screen quality, cost, functionality, or performance in the last 20 years? They don't necessarily have to add more functions but there are plenty of improvements that could be made.
The bigger problem really is that too many students rely on these things as a crutch and never really learn the math properly. You do not need a graphing calculator the vast majority of the time to learn the concepts shown on the graph. If you don't understand without a calculator what a parabola or sine wave is, the calculator is not going to help. Aside from calculating things like sine and cosine functions I really don't see much point in graphing calculators until after students have mastered the concepts they calculate.
There are plenty of used 83, 82, and 81 calculators out there. I made it through algebra and calculus just fine with an 81 (thank you very much) and they are dirt cheap on the used market. Unless there is something specific that a class needs from the 84, I would look to the earlier models.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Because the goal isn't how to teach kids how to pass a test, it is how to solve problems.
Since schools seem to teach to the tests, removing the evaluation step from the test would have the practical effect of removing the evaluation step from the instruction as well.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
They could use an e-paper display for even lower power consumption and better readability (higher resolution, better contrast).
If NOBODY has to remember ANYTHING because the Internet does it for you, when are teachers gonna relent? Oh, and "what if the grid goes down, smart guy?" "Well, that's highly unlikely.." "What if it does?" "Well, then, _some_ people will remember math..during the mass killing..what's your point?"
I conquered school (and university) without having a graphical calculator. And yes, I'm one of those who still knows how to calculate stuff in their head and work with fractions, integrals,.. on a normal piece of paper.
+ I too agree 150 $ for a school calculator is way too high, but I don't really see the point why a graphic calculator is really needed to begin with.
Same here: no calculators allowed for me during High School math tests. High School Physics and Chemistry was another story, we could use basic calculators since we had to provide a numeric answer down to the correct number of specific digits.
And in college it was a mixed bag: a couple would allow it, most wouldn't. And the few that would allow it would often require you to wipe the memory in front of them while they watched.
What is stupid is citing "Prof. Norm Matloff"; the man plays fast and loose with the truth based on his agenda-du-jour.
Why are teachers teaching how to use a specific calculator? Why isn't it simply a homework assignment? Teach the problem and then tell them to go home and figure it out for their calculator. Have students gotten that spoiled by technology that they cannot read and comprehend a manual on how to use a calculator to solve a class of problems? I used an HP-48G for those classes that required it (still have it 20 years later) and used a cheap scientific calculator for those tests where the HP wasn't allowed. The Casio users and the two of us HP users got along in class just fine.
There should have been an opportunity for some competitor (e.g. Casio or HP) to use 2014 technology to deliver the same capabilities
It should be noted that this is very difficult to do, because many modern math textbooks are actually built around the assumption that students are using TI-84's. I took an algebra course a couple of years ago at a local college and every example in the text actually used illustrations and instructions on how to do the graphing on a TI-84 specifically. So unless the competitor could copy the look, functionality, and layout of a TI-84 exactly (and I'm sure that would get them sued), profs and instructors would be inundated with "But how do I do that on my Casio?" questions that they aren't going to want to deal with. And so they would probably still make the TI-84 a requirement for the course, just to avoid that hassle.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
n/t
The *only* use? I completely disagree as an engineer. I have all kinds of "big boy" computational tools at my disposal, but at least once I day I turn on my TI-89 and use it for something.
I'm an engineer and also an accountant (yes I do both) in my day job. I have all sorts of fancy calculators including some TI-8X series and I can't remember the last time I used any of them. I sit in front of a desk where I have a spreadsheet and a basic calculator. If the job is complicated enough that I would need a TI-8X or involves calculating with lots of numbers then I'm just going to use the spreadsheet or some other analytical software. If it is just a basic quick addition or similar then I'm going to use a simple calculator. I really have no use for a "fancy" graphing calculator.
The thing that I find odd among accountants it that you wouldn't believe how many of them still rely on paper tape calculators. I have NO idea why anyone would use one of those when they are sitting in front of a spreadsheet but a ton of accountants still do. Bizarre...
A calculator became popular because of what it could do. It remained popular because of what it couldn't.
Sounds kind of like the Apple business model, really.
I still have the HP 48G I used in college. Now my son brings it to middle school and uses it to pick up chicks.
Humans are now distributed systems, there is no value in memorizing any fact when information is available 24/7 everywhere.
Remember that the next time your surgeon needs to look something up on Google while you are coding on the operating table.
Yes there is value in knowing facts even to this day and that will never change. If any of my employees had to look up how to do their jobs constantly they would be quite useless. There is SOME information that is not worth memorizing but it doesn't follow that there is no value in memorization at all.
They don't choose the TI-86 because it is discontinued.
They're not overpriced: TI knows students are forced to use them so they feel no need to lower their price. 150$ is within reach of many families and should they cost more that would force the issue. It's called free market: demand sets the price. Suck it up.
Except tablets are in that price range now and there are TI emulators in the Play Store.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
Did something change? I took the EIT back in the 90s and the very programmable HP-48G was allowed.
Yeah, the dinosaurs finally caught on to the fact that students were using them to cheat.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
In my university, you have one allowed calculator, and you still had to pay to get a sticker to let the exam procs know that "yes, this calculator is allowed"
I guess I understand this stuff for standardized tests somewhat, but what sort of crap is this for university exams? If your exam can be thwarted by just having a slightly more powerful graphing or programmable calculator, your exam is probably not testing very much.
When I was an undergrad, most exams in advanced science and engineering classes allowed you to bring ANYTHING as long as it didn't involve communication with people outside the room. Forget about just calculators (ANY calculator), some people would be STACKS of textbooks, and I even remember some laptops (though those were less common back then -- largescale wireless also didn't quite exist yet).
When I first had a test like this, I packed a pile of books too, along with whatever calculator I had (I think a TI-85), etc. But I quickly realized that most of this was useless. In the limited time we had, if I didn't already know the stuff, I'm not going to have time to learn it from a book.
And the tests always had complex questions designed to test your ability to confront new types of problems (and to often present symbolic answers with your work, not just some final numerical output from a calculator, nor even some symbolic answer spit out by Mathematica, even if you had a laptop), so even if you had somehow programmed your calculator to output a numerical answer and handle every problem you had encountered in the class so far, you'd still have to have some pretty serious critical thinking skills to do well.
If the only thing standing between you and an A on exams is having a "non-stickered" slightly more "advanced" piece of crap calculator built on 20-year-old technology to do your exams with, that course is probably not asking very much of its students.
Why not just make requirements/limits on the features and let users pick whatever brand they want? It's horrible that the discussion is about "which brand should we (exclusively) allow". Every/any calculator maker should be allowed to make a device that fits requirements and be allowed in schools.
You can't use a tablet on the SAT, probably not on the ACT, and definitely not in the classroom.
Real free market requirtes no barrier to entry : good luck trying to compete with them.
What's free about a market where you're required to pick one specific service? It's a monopoly.
Teaching material should be required to be device-agnostic, plain and simple. (unless ofcourse you are taking a course in a specific device).
As strange as it sounds, the TI-84 is a newer model than the TI-86.
Basically, the lines went like this:
TI-82 -> TI-83 -> TI-84 Plus -> TI-84 Plus Color
TI-85 -> TI-86
Since it's not obvious on that list, the 82 and 85 came out around the same time, as did the 83 and 86.
Incidentally, it's important to note that the stats listed in the summary are for the black and white version and not the newer color version and yet it's the color version's MSRP they're listing.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Yeah, and textbooks SHOULD be cheap and/or open-source too. But good luck with that.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Then the schools can damn well buy the calculators for their students.
Because school districts taxing property owners and buying calculators is so much more efficient than students obtaining their own calculators with that same money.
IMHO, one of the big problems with "$technology_items for every student" is that parents incorrectly look at this as a windfall entitlement -- free stuff for their kids that they don't have to buy themselves, when that's more or less exactly what's happening -- the district taxes the property owners and the taxes buy the stuff. TANSTAAFL.
In some ways, though, there is a free lunch component because schools are usually funded by property taxes which includes many properties without kids, shifting the burden of goodies for kids to people without kids.
The technology in them is probably dirt cheap (and may have been at the time of release) a low res grayscale ~2" screen plus enough processing power to solve relatively simple math probably all of $5 cost. The rest is usability and brand recognition. That said there is something to being able to visualize things in your head. Perhaps not everyone is wired the same way but I managed my way through an honours physics degree with nothing better than a $10 basic scientific calculator: graphs, intersections, roots of a function etc I know how to calculate them and am pretty good at once I know where they are visualizing how the graph should look. Regardless of how common it is I suspect you never are going to be among those skilled at math intensive fields if you need to consult a calculator some times. Sometimes you just need to be able to figure out from the direction of current in a wire which direction the magnetic field will be generated and thus what direction the induced field in the second conductor will be traveling sort of like a sense of direction: if you don't have one don't be a cabby (though GPS makes that easier now I suppose).
Because school districts taxing property owners and buying calculators is so much more efficient than students obtaining their own calculators with that same money.
Who said the students would keep the calculators? The only situation where you MUST HAVE THIS SPECIFIC CALCULATOR is in the classroom. Keep the calculator there! The special calculator stays where people find it worthwhile, everywhere else the rest of us can use a computer like a normal person.
If you're actually going in to a field where having a fancy calculator is useful versus a smartphone you can buy it yourself then. Most of us have absolutely no need for these things beyond the few tests for which they're required.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
1) Take oldest phone that can emulate the TI's
2) Add emulator, then lock down phone to not allow other things to be installed
3) Remove Sim card
Problem solved, where do I pick up my check?
It's called free market: demand sets the price. Suck it up.
Free market requires competition. If you're required to use this specific model there is not competition. That is not the free market. Suck it yourself.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
I wonder if the TI-84 is enough of a standard that an argument could be made that copying is necessary for the sake of interoperability?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I felt that the TI-82 calculators should be sold at the end of the semester, just like many college textbooks are. That is a way of countering the high price.
You can't use a tablet on the SAT, probably not on the ACT, and definitely not in the classroom.
Maybe this is showing my age, but I wasn't allowed to use a calculator on the ACT
If a point to not having smartphones is that the student will space out, then teachers haven't learned anything in the last two decades. That or they found a way to keep games off the graphing calculators?
Ten years later, the base model still has 480 kilobytes of ROM and 24 kilobytes of RAM, its black-and-white screen remains 96x64 pixels, and the MSRP is still $150
I really hate it when people pass off misinformation.
As tempting as it is to call the black and white version the base model, it doesn't appear to be manufactured any longer.
Which means that the current base model is the version that has with 3.5 megabytes ROM and 21 kilobytes RAM, with a color screen that is 320x240 screen. The calculator also has a rechargeable battery (type unknown) and an MSRP of $140.
You can find this information (except the MSRP) on this chart.
Incidentally, Amazon US currently sells the color LCD model (black) for $104. Other colors seems to cost more.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
This is one of the biggest problems with our education system. We tend to teach memorization rather than understanding. I read a quote somewhere recently, "Our brains are factories, not warehouses" yet we, as a society, tend to treat them as storage devices...
If it's a school requirement, the school is responsible for paying for it. And yes, it is more efficient for a school to buy calculators in bulk than to expect each student to buy their own.
That's exactly what school taxes are for. Else, why not simply pro-rate the facility, staff, etc. costs, charge the parents for that directly, and eliminate all school taxes?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Entering the numbers into the calculator and pressing enter isn't a complex task, there is no need for that to be part of the test.
It's not quite as trivial as that. I have engineering students in college who use the "10^x" button for scientific notation instead of "EE" (or whatever it's called on your calculator), and so when asked to calculate 4/(2e3) will end up with 2000 instead of 0.002 (because they type 4 / 2 x 10^3).
Glad we don't have this issue over in the UK... we've got several alternative calculators that students can use - I still have my Casio but to be honest, after university, I have never used it since. They just end up as hand-me-downs and looking at calculators now, nothing has really changed and as long as AAA batteries exist, I can't see mine not being passed down for generations!
You are saying each educator must do a thorough evaluation of whatever device a student brings in, and assume that educators would be able to make an accurate assessment.
An approved list of models is significantly more feasible here. But no one other than TI seems to care. Presumably because the moment there is a viable alternative, the market will drop to thanklessly low margins.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
back then -- largescale wireless also didn't quite exist yet.
It is not because other calculators might be more powerful. Primarily, it is because TI has paid or schmoozed the right people. Officially, the word is that they cannot verify that any other calculators do not include internet or phone network access, and maybe a handful of other features. But at the same time, I have never taken a test that allowed you to bring anything you wanted; Tests are too much about memorizing the material for it to be feasible to allow text books. And when they do, it is only because the test is designed that unless you are an absolute expert and memorised everything, you will not have time to finish.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
AAA batteries last a very long time in a TI-8x and they're cheap. If anything, make sure it can run on rechargeable batteries. Given a device can only practically get so large, I don't like the idea of taking away device area for a solar panel. That worked on simpler calculators, I don't think it would work well on graphing calculators.
I think it would be nice if they had higher pitch screens, in color.
I also don't agree with the story's assertion that TI is the monopoly, Casio has graphing calculators for $50. At least, they were legal in my high school. I thought they were nicer too. Granted, a duopoly isn't always that much better than a monopoly.
That also addresses another concern, about people bringing in unapproved data preprogrammed in the calculators. If the calculators are provided, this isn't an issue.
Note that when I was in school, this is precisely how graphing calculators were handled. The school had a box of TI-81s shared amongst a few classrooms.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Hmm, 50 button matrix, an arduino pro mini, and a 128x64 color I2C lcd display. Ebay == $15 including shipping from china.
Some programing and you to could have a graphic calculator for cheep.
Maybe that should be a mandatory class in electronics for JH students. Learn electronics, learn some programing, and get a graphing calculator that you can use for High School and beyond.
Heck, they could even 3d print a nice case for it.
If they did much more they wouldn't be allowed to be used
All that means is that the tests don't test for anything truly important, like understanding. If we had well-designed tests, you couldn't pass them without actual understanding of the material, even if you had a book and/or a calculator with lots of shortcuts and formulas programmed into it. Good math classes often have open book tests.
I don't buy the argument for schools buying tech for students, but it's not correct for school to mandate a manufacturer. This is also against free competition, and consumer choice should be mandated instead.
...I still have the HP 48G I used in college. Now my son brings it to middle school and uses it to pick up chicks.
If your son is picking up chicks in middle school I deduce (a) he is approximately age 12 to 14, (b) you taught him well, and (c) he is not the typical slashdotter.
This is really a textbook problem at the college-level. If the pre-calc trig book requires a TI calculator to demonstrate how to graph a problem, the TI calculator will be the de facto calculator for all classroom demonstrations. If you have a different calculator, the instructor may or may not try to help you. I had to do my own graphs by hand because I couldn't afford a $150 TI calculator back in the 1990's.
For everything but the standardized tests the students can use a graphing calculator app that is available for their smartphone.
This won't fly, for a number of reasons all having to do with who controls the device, both officially and in practice.
The option is mentioned in the summary so clearly it is on the table. As long as they aren't allowed during the tests it shouldn't be a problem to allow the students to use them instead of buying a dedicated graphing calculator.
The argument against that is mentioned in the summary is just silly.
Schools are understandably reluctant to let them be used in classrooms, where students may opt to tune out in class and instead text friends or play games
Anyone who has visited a school recently knows that some students already opts to tune out and text friends or play games, using the phone as a calculator is not going to change that.
The big difference is that the students will have the phone on the desk where everyone can see what they do with it instead of holding it below the desk like they usually do now.
As one teacher said; we know that you are texting your friends. No-one looks down on their crotch and smiles.
Remember that the next time your surgeon needs to look something up on Google while you are coding on the operating table.
Wow, you came up with an extreme example that doesn't apply to most people. Well done.
Then again, he did say, "there is no value in memorizing any fact."
Have you seen the prices of textbooks lately? A hundred here, a hundred there. You're soon talking real money. Add $150 TI calculator on top that. I had that struggle back in the 1990's when the TI calculator became a requirement for college math classes. I took pre-calc trig without the TI calculator because I didn't have an extra $150 for the semester, drawing all my graphs by hand.
The school district where I live issues calculators to the students the same way they issue textbooks. They issue different calculators for different levels of classes. The higher level classes might get a TI-84 while the more basic classes might receive a simpler scientific calculator like a TI-34. Makes a lot of sense to me.
Which is why all three of those don't reflect real life.
that word. you keep using it.
i don't think it means what you think it means.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
My middle and high schools had TI-81s for students to use if they did not buy their own (I bought a TI-83 for use in non-math classes, like physics...)
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
but you can put it on your student loans so that is why can change that much.
is that education is a racket and universities operate like a cult.
It may be more efficient to buy in bulk, but that doesn't necessarily mean the prices will be lower. The TI representative could bribe the person(s) responsible for purchasing to accept the higher prices, for example.
This reminds me of the first time I tried to use an HP RPN calculator. It was circa 1972, and I was taking undergraduate courses at Rice University. I showed up for my physics final only to realize Id forgotten my calculator, a TI SR-10 - an early replacement for the slide rule, the basic 4 functions, square root, inverse and squared added. There were lots of calculations to do on these tests, and it was gonna be a slog without a calculator. The TA proctoring the exam had his calculator on his desk, an HP35, but he wasn't using it, so I asked him if I could borrow it. With a sly grin he asked "ever used an HP calculator before"? I said, no I hadn't, but, how different could it be, a calculator's a calculator, isn't it? "Sure", he agreed, and pushed it over to me with a smile. So went my first encounter with RPN, which I had never heard of before....I didn't do at all well on that exam. Oddly enough, years later when I got an HP16 for my programming job, I felt in love with RPN, and prefer it to algebraic entry calculators to this day.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Wow, you came up with an extreme example that doesn't apply to most people. Well done.
Sometimes an extreme example is useful to get people to pay attention when they make false absolute statements. I can easily come up with more mundane examples if you would like. I'm an accountant and I damn well need to memorize whether increasing an asset is a debit or a credit. (it's a debit, FYI) Sure I can look it up but I would be pretty ineffective at my job if I needed to do that. A programmer damn well had better not have to look up how to pass a parameter in the language they are using.
Then again, he did say, "there is no value in memorizing any fact."
Exactly my point.
So what happens if I remove the TI-OS from my calculator and use a different one? Who's cheating now?
Letting the students write the expression instead of the result would accomplish that better, though -- at least on higher-grade exams, where it's assumed that the student has already learned how to do the computation. (Lower-grade exams designed to test the computation itself shouldn't allow calculators at all.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Did something change? I took the EIT back in the 90s and the very programmable HP-48G was allowed.
I took it in 2009, only Scientific calculators from a small list were allowed. No graphing calculators at all.
Overpriced yes, but there's also the priceless aspect of learning to program with TI-BASIC, and analog peer to peer file sharing, which I guess isn't as relevant nowadays.
"The TI representative could bribe the person(s) responsible for purchasing to accept the higher prices, for example."
Or terrorists could plant bombs in the calculator boxes, or the TI rep might go on a school shooting spree.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
As a community college math professor, the only "upgrade" they need is to charge a realistic price! These things should realistically be $20-30. As it stands, they cost basically $100, which is comparable to the price of the textbook (which is also inflated).
At my school (albeit a public institution that recieves state/federal funding) the tuition for our College Algebra class is actually the same as the price of a new book + TI84...that's just ridiculous. At least the publishers of textbooks are finding ways to add some extra value (like access to online homework systems, which teachers love!) but I fail to see what additional value TI is adding. Yes, they've added a color model, for 1.5X the price of the barebones model, but its basically the same calculator with a backlit color screen.
I tell my students to go to the pawn shop down the street or ask around about used calculators. Pawn shops regularly sell them used for $30-50 around here.
Damn. That's actually a really good idea. You'd have mod points if I had them.
I guess I understand this stuff for standardized tests somewhat, but what sort of crap is this for university exams? If your exam can be thwarted by just having a slightly more powerful graphing or programmable calculator, your exam is probably not testing very much.
...as a community college math professor, I basically agree. I'd add that for remedial classes, perhaps *no* calculator should be allowed.
The true problem (IMO) that has infiltrated K-16 math is that somehow we should always have calculators handy...essentially making the student a manager who is allowed to offload some of the gruntwork to a call center overseas. Unfortunately, in classes that are algebra intensive, many students have no hope performing symbolic operations, because they are so unfamiliar with basic arithmetic! It used to be when explaining difficult things (like factoring) in a basic algebra class, I could give them a frame of reference by showing them similar ideas with numbers...now they seem to get lost on that too!
There are cases where it's useful to have things memorized. However, schools expect you to memorize too much, and often what you do memorize is just useless. Also, the way they try to force memorization on you is just inefficient. I memorize much better when it happens naturally (that is, I retrieve the information of my own volition, and eventually memorize it naturally).
The point is, having tests that require you to memorize random garbage is just idiotic. I would be insulted if a test asked me how to pass a parameter in a language. Tests should test understanding wherever possible, and most of the time, it is possible.
"the Outdated TI-84 Plus"
:) I guess it's more nostalgia at this point for me, but still, these things were/are quite great. Yes, pricey, but I don't mind paying some extra for a tool that lasts forever (and they seemingly do).
That's stupid: it's not outdated, it's just old, but nevertheless, it works quite well. I still have my 83, haven't used it for many years now, but still check the batteries in it from time to time to be sure it'll never die
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Casios fx-cg10(US 20 elsewhere) is a FAR better calc than the ti-8x series, although it's a bit pricey(about the same as the ti-84+cse, but has a MUCH faster CPU, more RAM, and more flash("ROM" in that wp article as it's used for more than storing the fw). Even the fx-9860g series is better, similar slightly lower clocked CPU(v. fx-cgs) but otherwise very similar specs.
OTOH there's a decent community SDK(C/asm) for the fx-cg10/20, Casio's builtin BASIC is awful(all models) and there had been an official SDK for older model 9860s(different CPU) and older classpads(fx-cp300 series IIRC) also had an official(read casio) SDK.
The replacement fx-cp, the classpad "II" fx-cp400 now sports color higher res display, faster CPU, even more RAM/FLASH but no SDK(official or otherwise), it's dog slow, has only craptastic Casio BASIC, decent CAS(but sssslllllooooowwwwww) and is priced at c. nspire cx cas level. That said for the same price or lower cx cas or even better the hp prime are FAR FAR FAR and away superior. CX CAS has the ndless(TI OS =3.6, 3.9 is current) SDK for C, builtin lua & a poor implementation of BASIC v. the Ti-8Xs, meanwhile the prime is just FAST, uses giac/xcas for the CAS, mostly lost RPN, but has a nice fast builtin programming language and is CHEAPER(c. $115) than either the cx cas or the cpii(both c. $140ish).
HP 50G is still pretty decently fast, runs off batts, has RPL as builtin programming language, runs either RPN or algebraically, decent CAS, fairly quick, fair amount of RAM(512KB)/FLASH, plus an SD card slot, along with a community SDK/HPGCC.
fx-cg10/20/fx-9860/fx-cp400/300s/HP-50G use AAAs
ti-8Xs use AAAs
ti-84+cse/HP Prime/nspires have rechargeable batts
Essentially any of the ones with CAS(and I forget what else) are banned on ACT, but most of them are useable on everything else from what I've read.
All of this said, sad to says calcs are about dead. I still like to use them for the nice calc oriented keypads for q&d, but anything detailed even my phone running maxima, octave, or xcas do better(Prime is generally about as fast as smartphones) or same(or Mathematica/Maple/Matlab) on desktop again for detail.
Schools are understandably reluctant to let [smartphones] be used in classrooms, where students may opt to tune out in class and instead text friends or play games.
Umm, what do you think kids are doing with their calculators? I seem to recall multi-player bomberman and tetris matches happening in the back of math class thanks to the TI-83+ link cable.
1MB memory brain chip will give all of us an edge in memorization!
I was. And it was limited to calculators like the TI81/82/83, and specifically excluded calculators with any kind of wireless communication capability, like the HP48 series and several Sharp and Casio models that had IR, or could use a PCMCIA card like the HP.
I agree with the original poster, the TI81-series does only one thing well, and does that one thing quite well. I do have a Sharp that does function-entry a little better (it reformats the expression as it's entered to look like it does on the page, assuming that the operator follows the proper order-of-operations) but the TI83 that I had was fast enough that letting it process the expression didn't require enough wait time to really matter, and it was easy to use.
I don't think that general-purpose computing equipment is a good thing for education. It's too easy to get distracted and very easy to do something other than one's assigned task. Even when I was a kid, the computers weren't networked and we still managed to get distracted. The only computers that we didn't get distracted by were those lacking a hard disk drive, one had to boot off of a floppy, and the program loaded from there. Couldn't do anything else with the computer except that which we were assigned to do. And funny enough, we still had a good time with it.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I have no patience with the argument "that's the way we've always done it". That is one of the most costly and damaging sentences in the English language. There are times to leave well enough alone but this certainly isn't one of them.
Interface and functionality? No, they couldn't improve that.
I disagree. The buttons don't have to be the same. The menus can be improved. More, better or different functions can be added. You could change to something completely different like a touchscreen. You're presuming it cannot be improved merely because no one has. The big innovation in cell phones in the last 10 years was the development of designed for touch interfaces. That was huge and it revolutionized the industry. There is no reason a pocket calculator has to hew to the traditions of 20 years ago just because we've always done it that way.
Even if something else is theoretically "better" (like RPN), there's too much inertia behind the status quo.
There is no reason a calculator cannot offer both RPN and algebraic notation and let the user choose. This isn't like the Querty vs Dvorak keyboard argument. There is no reason new calculators have to resemble existing calculators at all aside from efficiently doing math. Some of what we are doing now makes sense. Some can stand some significant improvement.
Maybe: color and/or LEDs would be inappropriate, but e-ink might be acceptable if it had the same resolution and refresh rate as the LCD it replaced (ideally, it should also support or emulate the "grayscale mode" accomplished by some TI-8X software by turning the pixels on and off really fast)
You offhandedly dismiss color and LEDs as "inappropriate" but unless you've actually tried I think you are being too hasty. You may be right but it's entirely possible there may be a market segment that very much desires such a thing and you don't know until you try. You can put a pretty big battery in a calculator the size of a TI-8X and it doesn't have to be feather light. I agree that e-ink might be interesting as well but there is no reason at all it needs to replicate the ridiculously low resolution of 20 year old technology.
Cost and performance? Yes, those could be improved -- I said as much in my post! But they don't count as making it outdated IMO.
If you can get better performance for the same (or less) money with newer technology then it is de-facto outdated. QED.
I don't disagree in principle, but the reality is that the schools would never, ever require the computation step and the skills would atrophy. In the real world, the result is the only thing that matters - so this discrepancy would be bad.
Besides, it is hard to "smell" a bad answer unless you get a computed result.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I still own a 'scientific' calculator that I bought in 1983, and it took me all the way up through Physics, Statics, Dynamics and Thermodynamics courses in a rather fine Engineering college. What do these fancy graphing calculators offer that paper and pencil + a decent scientific calculator can't ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
That's called being unaware of the order of operations. Don't blame this on not having a dedicated key for doing your parentheses for you. That problem should've been solved back in elementary school.
So you don't do advanced math? That's fine, but that doesn't invalidate the use of the Ti.
Sure I do. I do a ton of statistics and a bit of trig. None of which would be made easier in any way with a TI graphing calculator. I've worked as a design engineer, a stats analyst, an accountant, a finance analysis, and an industrial engineer. I have not once in 20 years found any situation in any of those jobs where a TI-8X would have been necessary or even particularly useful given that I have a PC available to me and no space or severe cost constraints. My computer can do the calculations more efficiently and with a far better interface. For basic quick and dirty calculations I don't need a fancy graphing calculator. The only reasons students are limited to such small devices is for space constraints in classrooms and cost. Since neither of those apply in my professional life there is no use case for me for those devices. None.
Since HP basically got out of the calculator business, the HP 50G, which in my opinion is a better calculator anyway, has been available to the public in software form for free. It uses the actual ROM code from the 50G, which HP donated to the public domain.
You have to look around a bit, but versions are available for Mac, PC, and Linux.
Unlike the TI models, straight math can be entered in algebraic or RPN mode, and formulas can also use the "formula writer".
I've always like TI, and I have nothing against them, but over the years, having used various TI and comparable HP models, I've invariably thought the HP was superior.
This is why entire schools or school districts should sign contracts with certain vendors of calculators. If a district picked a certain brand, then different teachers would be able to work together or with the vendor that sold them on how to do certain things on them. Teachers could call a support line to get help and so on.
The only way that change will happen is if there is competition in the market. And the only way that's going to happen is if entire school districts start diversifying what they're using.
Sure, that could save some money for parents, but could result in the TI sales rep no longer taking the purchasing manager out for free lunches.
students were using them to cheat.
That is some feat! The exam is open-book and the calculator only has IR communications.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The alternative is to set up a certification process, but no one seems to be stepping up to the plate to do that, especially if there is just one player in the market. And no, I'm not going to buy my kids a cheaper $10 knock-off that keeps shutting down during a standardized test or takes 60 seconds to plot a function during a 30 second pop quiz. Unfortunately the poor end up suffering competitive setbacks in their education because their technology is not up to par.
I have engineering students in college who use the "10^x" button for scientific notation instead of "EE" (or whatever it's called on your calculator), and so when asked to calculate 4/(2e3) will end up with 2000 instead of 0.002 (because they type 4 / 2 x 10^3).
Which demonstrates their lack of understanding of that particular computer(calculator)'s syntax, and has nothing whatsoever to do with their understanding of engineering principles, engineering math, or engineering methodologies.
You're testing the wrong thing.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Right, but didn't the 86 have more features than the 84?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
So a school requires attendance by force of law, requires parents to use a specific make and model of product, and you think that constitutes a free market for setting the price?
From Wikipedia:
"A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity. Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce the good or service and a lack of viable substitute goods."
Also from Wikipedia:
"Monopolies derive their market power from barriers to entry -- circumstances that prevent or greatly impede a potential competitor's ability to compete in a market."
Please enlighten us with your definition of a monopoly and why it isn't applicable to this situation.
My school was pretty open about us using other types of calculators. They only taught TI but if you were willing to take it upon yourself you could use any kind you wanted. My parents bought me an HP 48G (RPN). I liked it b/c I had dreams of programming it to do stuff (kind of like today's smart phones). It was more capable than TIs. I never got around to programming anything. I became comfortable with it so I stuck with it even though figuring out how to do the more advanced functions all by myself made class much more painful. I would not recommend going counter to the rest of the class to any current students.
While in a perfect world schools would cater to the student's or parents' choice but it isn't practical. I can certainly understand educators not wanting to learn 10 different kinds of calculators. Even if the teacher already knows them all, individually teaching students to use their calculators would slow down the class. I also undertand them not allowing general purpose devices such as smart phones. I'm not so convinced about the distraction argument (they only hurt themselves). I do think the possiblity for cheating makes them unusable.
What really sucks though is the resulting TI monopoly. Of course they are over priced and under-evolved! Why wouldn't they be??
What I would really want to see is a STANDARD generic calculator that anyone can produce. TI of course is never going to allow their own "IP" to be used that way. Unfortunately even if someone designed such a thing and made it free it will go nowhere because educators do not care about this sort of thing enough to make the switch.
The only solution I can see (unfortunately) is government action. I think that the government should be the LAST option for solving any problem but what else could ever break the monopoly? It's self-sustaining!
It could be made law that all school switch to an open calculator. Or... I've never heard of this happening but doesn't copyright law have something written in about eminent domain? TI could be forced to allow others to produce TI-like calculators. That is an ugly solution! Any time government takes private property, that is a horrible precident. It might be a bit more "fair" to TI though. At least making TI-like calculators TI would still have a head start. Also eminent domain usually requires some sort of compensation. What value is that "IP" to TI after some other open design has been mandated?
Ultimately I don't see either of these things happening. The current political situation is way too pro-corporation, anti-consumer to ever do anything like that and it shows no signs of changing. At least my own story has a somewhat happy ending. My old HP calculator died (screen cracked). But.. HP released the ROMS, free and legal! There is an emulator that let's me use it exactly like I used to. And.. since I am no longer in school I can even run it on my cellphone! I could do the same with TI but I would have to pirate a ROM.
Not that they need something more. I still have my ti-82 on the shelf... hah
ti-82 on the shelf? mine is still on my desk at work. nothings better for doing some simple quick calculations. the big knobby keys are much easier to use than my touchscreen.
It may be more efficient to buy in bulk, but that doesn't necessarily mean the prices will be lower.
Depends how you look at it. Yes, if you only look at the per-calculator cost, it could be negotiated at $200 per calculator with no bribing necessary.
But unless the school is letting the students keep the calculators at the end of the school year, it ends up being cheaper. Because 30 * 200 is less than 60 * 150.
IMO, a worthy "update" to a TI graphing calculator would not be more RAM or a faster CPU, it would be power envelope improvements so it could run on solar (like a 4-function calculator can) and a slimmer, lighter body. (Of course, these days I just use a TI-89 emulator on my Android cellphone instead, so I'm not the target market...)
Do the screens completely suck? I remember seeing them no-so-many years ago, and the screens were still blocky, monochrome, low contrast screens. Considering what they're doing, I'd expect that you could make a paper-thin model with a retina display and a batter that lasts for a month and still cost around $100, if someone good were making them.
The argument for not switching to Casio...
...is that Casio can't even handle complex numbers. Just compare Casio to the HP RPN machines and you will cry (not if you're the HP owner, that is!).
Ezekiel 23:20
It's not a monopoly. It's just no one wants to learn reverse polish notation to use an HP calculator.
but you can put it on your student loans so that is why can change that much.
High school kids are having to take out student loans?
We're doomed.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The school requires for me to buy notebooks, pens, pencils, etc for my kids.
http://xkcd.com/768/
Remember that the next time your surgeon needs to look something up on Google while you are coding on the operating table.
You know that, unless the surgeon has done that specific procedure dozens of times before (and memorized it through practice), they'll review it before the surgery starts. Personally, I'll trust a surgeon that rechecks the books and videos before I'll trust one that operates based on memory of med school alone!
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I sympathize with the sentiment that calculators are overused in high school math courses, but I don't think it's necessary to ban them entirely. There are certain classes of problems that really make sense with sense with a calculator - compound interest is an obvious one.
Example: I invest 1$ in a bank account paying 3.5% interest compounded continuously for 30 years. How much money do I have at the end of that time? Well, you could leave your answer as e^1.05, but that's not a particularly intuitive answer and won't help a student much in their real world financial decision making. You could use those old fashioned log & exponential tables, but that would be pretty stupid and the students would rightly resent you for giving them busywork. Or you could just use a calculator to figure out it's $2.86 and move on.
Besides, calculators can remove a lot of drudgery for students, especially the more talented ones, even when problems can be done by hand. Multiplying matrices and calculating determinants by hand are extremely easy tasks - an intelligent high school student can pick up the algorithms in 15 minutes. Actually doing the calculations, however, takes a mind-numbingly long amount of time relative to how difficult the algorithms are. As an algebra II teacher, I could:
1) not teach linear algebra, which would be an annoying restriction, especially considering how useful it will be in physics next year,
2) make students do all calculations by hand, which will be a colossal waste of time for my more intelligent students, not to mention making them hate me,
3) ask mostly theoretical questions on tests and homework, which isn't really appropriate for a general purpose high school class,
4) teach my students to use R, which would be great if any, much less all, of the other math teachers knew R, and if I magically got 30 new computers in my classroom, and if teaching 30 students of varying technical ability how to use R weren't a bit of a time sink,
5) give in, let students do the grunt work by calculator, and spend more time teaching them applications and how to set up problems.
I'm pretty sure that option 5 is the least bad option for the average high school teacher, even if it is also the least ideologically agreeable choice.
It was still expensive, and it functioned in Reverse Polish Notation, but there was a lot about it that was better than the TI- line of calculators. It could even solve some integrals.
Heck, they could even 3d print a nice case for it.
Yes. They would have to model the case themselves before printing it. Or just send them down to shop class and throw in some basic wood and/or metal working.
You must also have that specific calculator to do the homework for the class.
The Casio FX-115ESPLUS. It can do complex numbers, differentiation and integration. Costs $18. That's what I'm going to get my kids when they are in HS.
Because school districts taxing property owners and buying calculators is so much more efficient than students obtaining their own calculators with that same money.
Who said the students would keep the calculators? The only situation where you MUST HAVE THIS SPECIFIC CALCULATOR is in the classroom. Keep the calculator there! The special calculator stays where people find it worthwhile, everywhere else the rest of us can use a computer like a normal person.
If you're actually going in to a field where having a fancy calculator is useful versus a smartphone you can buy it yourself then. Most of us have absolutely no need for these things beyond the few tests for which they're required.
You are so right. And to any parents who find the problem with this (what problem? wait for it...) I will sell you a TI-84 Simulator for your iPad that perfectly recreates the UI of the calculator that your little snowflake will need to master in order to get into college, and it won't even be that expensive! $49.95 should do the trick. Paypal or bitcoin, thx.
ncidentally, the other thing I don't understand about this is why anybody picks a TI-84 when they could have a TI-86. TI-89s are prohibited for standardized tests (because they have a Computer Algebra System), but TI-86s aren't and are better than TI-84s in every other way as far as I can tell...
I'm with you on there on the popularity of the TI-84 (and TI-82s back when I was a student), but the TI-89 absolutely is allowed in standardized tests. I used it back in the 90s when I was in high school on everything that a calculator was allowed for, including AP exams, and it doesn't seem like the policy has changed. Here are the list of allowed calculators for the SAT and Calculus AP exam.
If you think about it, the CAS really shouldn't be an issue. I mean, it's just as quick to set up a quick matrix in the TI-84 and invert / multiply to solve system of equations. Everyone I knew who didn't have a ti-89 was doing that. The multiple choice sections of those tests are designed to figure out if you know how to set up the problem. The non multiple-choice section of the calculus AP exam requires you to show work.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
If you enter e^(Pi*i), does it spit out -1?
Ezekiel 23:20
It's called free market: demand sets the price. Suck it up.
Free market requires competition. If you're required to use this specific model there is not competition. That is not the free market. Suck it yourself.
Ahem, free market requires lack of collusion. No one is stopping Casio, et.al from making a competitive product that does the same thing but costs 1/10th as much, except apparently they don't want to bother or are choosing to do it just differently enough that the learning curve is unattractive to prospective buyers. Maybe $150 for an educational product that is well thought out and well supported isn't over the top after all? What's amazing is that there isn't a 1:1 TI-84 clone from AliExpress that sells for $9 shipped (from Hong Kong.) The usually on-the-ball knockoff kings in China who can clone a new model of iPhone in 60 days for 30% of the cost aren't even bothering to go after what is allegedly a hugely profitable product? Something is fishy with the premise here.
From what little I have read on calculators in standardized testing, Texas Instruments never had or has a monopoly on approved calculators. In particular I have never seen a list of approved calculators that did not have at least some Casio or Sharp models as well, and more complete lists often included at least one HP model -- the real premium calculator for geeks.
The fact that the TI-84 Plus was probably the most advanced model approved, meant it marketed that position into a perception of being a highly desirable model that encouraged parents who were willing to pay the premium because they wanted to give their child ever advantage they could possibly afford or find.
Parents are "trained" (indoctrinated) right from pregnancy to buy "educational" toys, aids, to prenatal music blankets. After the child is born, they are constantly bombarded with "educational" products that often have no merit, beyond the statistical correlation between parents who invest the most money into their children's learning, are more likely to be the same ones who invest time in their children's learning as well.
While a Math/CS major in undergrad I used a $5 whatever-brand scientific calculator rather than my $100++ graphing calculator, because a) I didn't need any graphic or fancy features - they were useless, b) the battery life sucked, and I was too cheap to constantly replace them, c) other than engineering students who bought RPN calculators (e.g. HP-35) it didn't matter one iota, beyond merely having the cheapest scientific calculator you can find.
I am a Sr. Engineering Manager one of the nations major summative testing platforms. TI-84's are here to stay. We help schools out by licensing TI's software (javascript) version of the TI-84's (and other calculator models). It allows us to give every test taker a TI-84 calculator on the screen. It is a complete processor emulator in Javascript and loads ROM from files at startup.
On a funny/not so funny side, we were called up by a school because instead of taking the test, one of the test takers was playing "Mario". It's one of the included ROM games. One of the developers who built our original package didn't realize that there were additional ROM packs available that didn't include the games, so by default it included games.
I owed money to a loan shark for school lunch money in high school.
Adding to that, the TI calculators are also programmable. Unless they're checked right before the test is taken, then someone can still put whatever they want on them.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
I don't have time to verify all your fancy equations so I'll just agree.
Number crunching is stupid.
Math students should be using computers to visualize and manipulate math, and help them understand what it is they're solving for.
This is best done with modern, kick ass graphics, and on any modern tablet, can be done in real-time.
It's an embarrassment to the entire teaching profession that calculators are needed on any exam, but more over, it is doing a serious disservice to students to not use them for what they should be used for - math visualizing machines. The TI calculators are used by and large to hand-hold lazy teachers and provide them with busywork for students.
Grrrr.
Also, HP48GX forever.. but I didn't need it until engineering school. I completed all of the math courses for my EE without a calculator - they weren't allowed by the math department, and rightly so.
..don't panic
When I was in high school we were told to buy a specific model TI ( I don't remember the number) because thats what the teachers knew how to use. If you were the kid who bought the cheaper Casio with more features and a color screen you were on your own to figure out how to use it.
One thing that's usually neglected in these discussions is the toughness of the calculator. My TI-84+ rode in my backpack and got tossed around for the better part of a decade and still functions just as perfectly as it did the day I opened it, with nothing more than a couple surface scratches.
It's true that the electronics could be replicated for a few bucks these days, but it seems that competitors that try to shave that cost inevitably also try to shave the cost of the plastic shell. Casios that I have worked with feel much, much flimsier. Remember that most of these are going into the 6th-12th grade education market. Abuse is a normal operating condition.
The first "toughbook"-style TI 84 clone, maybe add a hi-res screen, maybe cost 30% less, will obliterate the monopoly. However, by the time the beancounters at Calculator Corp Z figure out that's what it will take, we'll already have every student provisioned with Surface Pro-style devices that can be locked down to appropriate features during tests. This market may have another ten years left of life in it.
In algebra-trig university physics courses I delivered, no calculators were needed or allowed. All of the inputs were single-digit integer values (primes, to avoid getting the correct multiple choice answer for the wrong reasons). Still, students wanted to use $1 arithmetic/square root calculators, as some had trouble with single-digit arithmetic and adding fractions. Factors such as pi and irrational numbers were of course presented unevaluated/unapproximated, though denominators were rationalized.
They disallowed calculators like the HP-48 beginning in 2000, the year I walked into the exam with an HP-48. Thankfully, the proctor allowed the calculators because NCEES had done a poor job of informing examinees. I doubt that there were more than a handful of students who had anything besides a graphing calculator, with the HP-48 being the clear majority. I'll be in bad shape when that calculator finally dies.
Then the schools can damn well buy the calculators for their students.
My 16 year old daughter has a TI-84. I bought it on eBay for $30. That is not a major expense. She has more than two dozen pairs of shoes that each cost far more than that.
That may seem funny, but to me this is all about memory management. Brains/CPUs with larger L1/L2 caches are better, because there is always the I/O overhead. Computing analogies also explain a lot about bureaucracies -- at some point the I/O starts to outweigh the benefits of a multiproc system. This is why flat organizations with localized decision-making are more efficient.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
It hasn't been open-book since, at least, 2000. When I took it, I was given a small booklet with useful equations and a pencil. The only materials I was allowed to bring were my calculator and my coffee. (Maybe I had an eraser, too. When I took the PE exam, they wouldn't even let me have my own eraser.)
The HP Prime is around $130, and uses modern ARM processors to be much faster, has color, SD and other stuff. And the HP50G is around it as well, offering more traditional RPN (it's a successor to the 49 and 48 series). Both are ARM powered devices and speedy. The 50 emulates the traditional Saturn CPU of the 48/49 series and fixes a few hardware limitations to make the software easier to write for. And I think it's even possible to do chunks in ARM code for even faster performance.
But the real reason people prefer calculators is the hardware buttons - you can enter numbers in far faster and with less errors on a keyboard than with a touchscreen, so you're paying a premium for that.
Describe a plausible real-world scenario in which an individual will be required to calculate solutions to physics problems without basic reference material and likely the Internet at their disposal.
Having run out of Internet data transfer allowance at the end of the month, perhaps?
Anyone got this emulator running under Linux?
"Welcome to the TilEm homepage"
You obviously don'y have kids in school. My school district is sending down all kinds of these ridiculous edicts for purchases. We are having to buy all kinds of shit to be collected by the teachers and provided to the classroom at their discretion. On my kids' 8th grade school supply list this year, besides the TI calculator:
A home computer
A Printer
Computer paper
Internet Access
Microsoft Office
Right, but didn't the 86 have more features than the 84?
If it did, I couldn't say... I never compared them and the last time I actually used an 85/86 was in the mid-90s.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
My daughter is using my old Casio FX-4000P that I used in high school. Her teacher said, "I won't be able to explain how to use that." My daughter replied, "I don't need you to because it's so easy."
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Free market does not 'require' competition. Do you have any evidence that there exists a 'competitor' who wishes to make a clone of this calculator, but is being prevented from doing so? No, you do not. Just because only one player chooses to play in a given market does not mean that the market is not free.
And then no one knows how to use the thing when they actually have to.
nope, that's called not actually checking your work. and not knowing syntax, and not knowing order of operations, and and and.
why not simply pro-rate the facility, staff, etc. costs, charge the parents for that directly, and eliminate all school taxes?
I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Instead of calculators we should bring back slides rules. It improves estimation and sanity checks as you're required to keep track of the magnitude yourself. The physical spacing of the numbers on the slide rule help influence visualizing spatial relationships. Some high speed mental arthritic people say they just picture an abacus in their head, I'm sure the exposure to a slide rule. The things learned when using a slide rule will be more helpful in life, more so than some expensive complex graphic calculator. If I ever do need precise arithmetic I have a simple (cheap!) scientific calculator (I guess it's an app in my smart phone now a days) and for anything more complex I just use a computer (R/octave/matlab/mathematica/mathCAD/python console).
But this begs the question why anyone needs a graphics calculator in the first place. Even the maths students at my uni were told they really shouldn't bother....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I wonder how many slashdotters still have their Ti-8x calculator from their university/college period? I know I still have it somewhere on the shelf.
And mind you, these calculators are not "outdated". They are designed to do very specific things, no less and no more. Latter is exceptionally important in testing process, where it's crucial that it's the student is tested for his knowledge of the subject, rather than his knowledge of how to program his calculator to solve the problem for him.
I used a TI-86 back in Junior High, HS, and for my first few semesters of college. It was, at the time, the best numerical calculator TI made and very user friendly compared to the more powerful competitor, the HP-48g. However, it is long deprecated. Presumably, the TI-84 can do everything the TI-86 can and more. Plus, it is currently supported by third-party developers which is a big advantage, and similar to the TI-83 calculator that has become the de facto standard of secondary education and some higher education.
If I ever went back to university and took a test where a calculator was useful, I would stick with my HP-50g. In higher learning, most professors either do not know which calculators have CAS or do not care. They either allow calculators on the test or ban them.
As for standardized tests, many do allow calculators with CAS on their tests. For instance, the SAT allows the TI-89 and HP-50g.
Obviously, I still have my old TI-86 and my HP-35 just in case I ever go back to school or have to take a standardized test with stricter standards.
HP is still in the calculator business. They just released a smartphone-like Calculator, the HP-Prime and still manufacture older calculators like the HP-50g.
These just are not used much as the standardized curriculum in US schools. Most students at college are taking their TI calculators with them because that is what they were told to buy in high schools. Some college classes use them, but most college teachers don't care. If they support calculators at all, they will tell you which one to buy and tell you you are on your own otherwise.
There are very specific models now allowed (I took the EIT in 2007 and will be taking the PE this year).
That's not to say that you can't have most of your cake and eat it too - I've got an HP 33s and a 35s that I'll be bringing to the PE exam, and it has an algebraic solver built-in. I think the key difference is there are no "text files" and you can't connect it to a computer like the TI models and the HP 48.
On the other hand, after I switched to the 33s for the EIT exam, I haven't touched my TI-89 or 86 since college - the 33 does everything I *need* it to in the real world, at least as a calculator (since anything more I'll just use MathCAD).
No, you just have to have it if you want support from the teacher. In high school, almost everyone had a TI-83. I had the more powerful TI-86. I simply used. . . the manual (they used to be these paper things included with products) to figure out how to accomplish the same tasks.
We also had a big box of TI-92 calculators to use in class as it was cheaper than 30 laptops running Mathematica.
There are a lot of school requirements that the school often does not pay for:
1. Musical instruments.
2. Appropriate clothing or school uniforms (and students certainly are not allowed to show up naked or in any attire they might happen to own).
3. Appropriate pencils, paper, backpacks, et cetera.
4. Occasionally books.
You must also have that specific calculator to do the homework for the class.
There are smartphone emulators for all of the TI-8x calculators. No reason that you need the physical calculator.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Usually, the teacher does not REQUIRE a specific model, they just strongly suggest it as it is the one the teacher is going to support.
Also, usually teachers have some limited pool of calculators for use on a test.
But it is usually not as mandatory as, say, forcing children to buy school uniforms or appropriate clothing and wear them to school.
Most of the classes requiring graphing calculators are not required to graduate from high school.
And most of the problem sets at home and on tests are still doable with a scientific calculator or a slide ruler, it is just much more difficult or tedious, just like you can still type out your reports on a typewritter if you really want to.
Most teachers are not going to allow tablets on a test (or necessarily even in the classroom at the secondary school level) and actual TI-emulators are illegal to use unless you buy them from TI or you own the actual calculator (although obviously, like NES cartridges, the ROMS for the emulators are available from dubious sources for pirates).
That being said, there are plenty of cheap or free graphing calculators for smartphones and tablets which are legal.
Are there e-paper screens that are fast enough? On my Kindle there is a noticeable lag for any screen update, and periodic total screen refreshes are required. That lag would be very annoying when entering formulas, numbers, or programming.
The calculator competes in a free market.
TI itself has figured out a business strategy to dominate the market.
It is not a monopoly. It is simply domination, similar to Wintel computers back in the 90's.
The biggest problem for competitors is that there is no longer much of a professional market for calculators and in US schools, TI has executed a brilliant business model.
Since HP basically got out of the calculator business, the HP 50G, which in my opinion is a better calculator anyway, has been available to the public in software form for free. It uses the actual ROM code from the 50G, which HP donated to the public domain.
You have to look around a bit, but versions are available for Mac, PC, and Linux.
Got a link? I'm not seeing any evidence for your claim of public domain'd 50G code.
The closest I found was this uncited part of a Wiki article:
In 2003, the CAS source code of the 49G ROM was released under the LGPL. In addition, this release included an interactive geometry program and some commands to allow compatibility with certain programs written for the newer 49g+ calculator. Due to licensing restrictions, the recompiled ROM cannot be redistributed.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
HP-50g has similar (but improved) functionality (mainly the introduction of a CAS). Unlike the new HP prime, it fully supports RPN as an option.
Many modern graphing calculators have options to enter equations in "pretty print" (basically, just like you would write them out). This takes a bit longer than coding it in like a line in a program or in RPN, but there is less chance of making a mistake.
Same here, many engineering classes I had were open book, but a few profs had closed books and some didn't even allow calculators.
I had one excellent engineering prof who allowed one page of notes to exams, but no calculator. Most of the questions were asked in a way such that there was little to no numeric computation required, and when he did request a numeric answer it was simple stuff that he expected us to be able to simply and quickly do in our head or on paper. His philosophy was that you need to understand the problem well enough and break it down to analyzable pieces sometimes with approximations so that you can get within ~5% of the correct numeric answer by hand analysis, and if higher accuracy is required it will generally be optimized on the computer with software you bought or wrote.
The homework problems would cover more rigorous computations and computer simulations, the tests were designed to see if you truly understood the problems at hand.
More features than the 83, but I would expect that the 84 probably has more features now given that it has been in development for an extra decade. Anything the 84 is lacking can probably be added onto the calculator, other than, of course, a CAS.
I feel like what he's getting at was a sense of urgency. coding seems to usually refer to that point where you've got 5 minutes to get some serious intervention before your brain starts dying. and memorization is memorization. In that situation, i want the dude to have a fucking encyclopedia in his brain, 20+years experience in the emergency room, 10 top-notch how-to videos ready to project directly onto his retina, and his entire fucking career riding on my survival.
memorization is pretty damn critical when things are time sensitive.
Nothing fishy. It is a hugely profitable product at $150, not at $9. TI has no doubt long ago paid all the sunk costs, etc for this product and can now, if they wanted, sell the product for very close to the marginal cost. So any competitor that comes in has to match that price (probably discounted even more because they don't have the TI brand), for a product that has a very limited market with no real upside at all. Or, said competitor could invest in some desirable product that has a future and competitors who really can't afford to drop the price much.
Just because some competitor has the ability to enter the market does not mean it is a wise business decision for them to do so.
Why? If you assign homework, you are an idiot if you believe that the students are going to obey any arbitrary restrictions that you place on the technology that they are allowed to use or the people with whom they are allowed to communicate. The students are free to use whatever calculator (or website) that is available. For those students who do not have access to technology at home, I've seen districts provide rentals or loaners that are returned at the end of the day / week / term / whatever.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Music is an elective activity, there's is no requirement. Clothing is required in public, regardless of whether you're in a school. Pencils, paper, etc. are helpful, but not a requirement (and will be provided if they are). Never heard of a library, have you?
You're really stretching. In the US, a free public education is promised under the law. All compulsory parts of school are free, regardless of what any particular school would like you to believe.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It's not a monopoly. It's just no one wants to learn reverse polish notation to use an HP calculator.
More the fool, they.
Breakfast served all day!
Different features, the 85s and 86s were more for calculus, and the 84 series has more features for statistics.
0 1 - just my two bits
My calculus teachers didn't allow us to use calculators when I was in college. I felt like I understood the math better this way. He picked problems that were not hard to do without calculators. Unless the goal is to teach kids to use the calculators themselves, why are they needed?
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Most math classes that require calculators are not requirements for graduation. At least, that was the case when I was in school.
Usually only Algebra I and Geometry are mandatory and usually they do not require graphing calculators (it does not help much for geometry anyway).
... illustrations and instructions on how to do the graphing on a TI-84 specifically.
And they call this teaching? You can train a monkey to operate a TI-84. But understanding the concepts of graphing and translate them into a specific implementation (TI-84), that takes a bit of brains. But once you have learned that, you can also use other equipment. Now you have something useful.
A lot longer. The parent's post about kids not using the 10^x function is, of course, all about entering the data in incorrectly. Which is about their lack of understanding in order of operations. However...
On an HP:
4 [enter]
2E3 [divide]
It's not too bad, and now that I do things that way, I am somewhat handicapped when it comes to other calculators...
In response to another comment, I took a look at the 50g, and at the Prime and very nearly bought the 50g right then. I noticed, though, that I can get a used 48gx for $200-$250. It's a hefty price difference, but there's zero learning curve. Maybe I'll think about it for another year or so. . .
I don't disagree in principle, but the reality is that the schools would never, ever require the computation step and the skills would atrophy.
That seems like a logical argument. However, give that the computation step is being carried out by an automatic device, the skills have already atrophied.
When I was at school, we were very rarely required to give a fully calculated answer in the final few years, instead being asked to reduce. When I went to one of Scotland's top universities, we were told our high-school calculators would be useless to us, because I would never, ever be asked to provide an exact answer. Ever. Never ever. Everything was to be reduced to the simplest form of xs, sins, nth roots etc. The final calculation was irrelevant. Why? Because (and this is the important bit) we could only conceivably do it on a calculator, and there is no educational reason for constantly testing our ability to press the cosh button or whatever.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I have a TI-83+ and a TI-89 at home. Admittedly, I haven't used them in a while--I have a HP 12c at my desk, basically always have excel and SAS running (and Tableau too these days), and actually do most quick arithmetic with launchy and alt-space. But, they are great calculators and they are still going strong.
Got the 89 late in high school because it was more fun to play with and had the CAS, but the 83 I have had since the 7th grade is perfectly functional. The key layout is sensible, the menus are navigable, and the low-res screen shows me what I need to know without draining the battery. The 89 is a little better at all of these things (and will pretty-print your inputs), but other than the CAS functions, I can't think of anything that it can do which the 83 cannot.
The 84+ is mostly a logical improvement over the 83. Little more modern look, faster cpu, USB and some more memory (more than enough for what is needed). It does have Mathprint which makes entry a little more like how you would write functions on paper (although I might argue against this..."classic" mode teaches kids how to enter functions with multiple parameters, which is a key lesson for anyone who will later do some simple scripting or even just write excel formulas). They have always felt overpriced, but if they are as durable and long lifed as my 83+, it is not a bad investment. Those calculators have been dropped, abused, and used hard for years without a thought about taking care of them. I owned them before I ever had a cell phone, and I still own them now, None of my phones have lasted that long (not even counting obsolescence...I kept my Razr for years but the keyboard corroded, and my Galaxy S was barely functional at the end of its life between software updates and degraded hardware).
Finally, the HP 12c is still a standard calculator for financial professionals. That thing is even more outddated than the TI-83 and uses RPN which nobody knows how to use, but it still goes for like $80 for the plus model. Similar issues abound: entrenched user base that knows how to use that specific model, lots of hand me down models (mine was made in 1988...2 years after I was born), and several big standardized tests that specify that model (the CFA exams, among others). Truth is, there isn't a ton of complaint from the actual users...because they calculators work great for their intended purpose. The 12c doesn't get complained about because the buyers are the users. The TI graphing calcs are being bought by parents who think "why am I paying so much for an obsolete piece of junk that does less than my kid's cell phone?" without realizing that the calculator does a significantly better job when it comes to features and usability.
Bottles.
This article is about graphing calculators. When kids are still in the "scientific" calculator realm, there is a lot less care about what model you use. Sure, they will recommend a model, but any calculator should be pretty easy to find the sqrt, sin, cos, and tan functions on (which is most of what kids need when they step beyond 4-function calculators).
Casio's graphing calculators are harder to use (the teacher truly won't be able to help), and while they compete on price, the cheapest casio grapher on amazon (without guessing at whether it meets the requirements) is $43. You can get an 83+ on amazon for $88, an 84+ for $94 and the fanciest silver edition for $104. If you don't want to keep the calculator after graduation, the TI calculators will have enough resale value to more than make up for the higher initial cost (and you can start off with a used one to save even more money). HP used to make some nice competition, but those days seem to be over.
yeah, the hardware seems weak, but remember, the hardware was weak when the 84 was first introduced--these have always functional, durable units rather than cutting edge tech (and what do you need your calculator to do? besides games, I can't think of what you would need a faster chip for...at that point, you are moving to a computer with a keyboard since you are about to do some programming).
Bottles.
Well, in fairness, the books did teach the concepts too. But all the "how-to's"and examples were shown on TI's. And all the exercises and problems presumed the student had a TI and had learned how to use it.
It would be possible for a student to use a different model. But they would have had to learn to use it completely on their own--as the text was aimed squarely at the TI-84 and the instructor probably wouldn't have been able to help with "But how do I do that on my X calculator?" questions
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Why would any textbook be based on a calculator? How is algebra taught nowadays?
How is algebra taught nowadays?
Graphing, graphing, graphing. Here is a typical test question in the elementary class:
Which of these five graphs represents the equation "x + 22 = y - 5"?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Frankly, I think it is a good thing that they have remained so stable. It's a tool, not some newfangled tech toy...just a fricking calculator. They don't become obsolete. When I was in high school in the early 2000s, I knew plenty of kids who had their older brother's TI-83. Today, their older brother's kids could now be old enough to continue using that exact same TI-83--and it really could be the exact same one since those calculators are durable as hell.
Which brings me to my second comment--I think it is hard to make a cheapo clone of these that doesn't suck. I'm sure someone could do it since there are android devices that sell for less (and TI emulators for android), but the build quality on the TI devices is pretty high. You'd have to stash all of the components in a pocketable case along with 50 physical keys, and make it capable of running on commodity batteries for months without a swap. Those physical keys have to stand up to a lot of abuse too...TI is raking in a lot of profit on these, but I bet their margins aren't really *that* high.
Bottles.
I'll do better than that.
Here is a screenshot from my Mac.
sigma, K, F, and T are variables I stored for some thermodynamic calculations I was doing earlier.
I should clarify:
It is the "50g mode" from the Emu48 project. The authors claim that it is authentic ROM, they thank HP for donating it to the project, and I have yet to find that it does anything differently from what is described in the 50G user's manual. And I've definitely been putting it through its paces. I don't claim to have tried everything in its repertoire... I haven't had need for literally everything it's got, and that would take a long time anyway.
You have a good point - especially at the college level where you have calluses on your fingers from all the high-school calculator work. But at the end of the day, there is still value in getting the final answer because you can give it a quick "stink" test - if the velocity of the rocket is 299,792,458 m/s, then you probably need to check your work :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I still have my slide rule that I used in high school... Oh, wait... I feel so old now
notably, the 12c is so iconic that it is the design inspiration behind iphone's default calculator. thank goodness the iphone isn't RPN tho...
I realized TIs were just garbage after getting an HP-48.
I get *why* it is better, and I see where it improves things, but I just can't get down with it. Maybe I spent too long using traditional calculators (and don't do enough with the 12cnow), but I can think around calculator entry and order of operations...RPN takes some of that thought away, but it comes so naturally on a normal calculator that I notice an improvement.
Probably just need to use it more...or use it for more complex calculations (but that's what computers are for...). I also use an RPN calculator app on my android phone, but I don't feel the benefits there either. Someone else at my company once posed the best reasoning for using the 12c that I have heard: his boss can't figure out how to work it, so he is never at risk of having it commandeered.
Bottles.
Times change.
But TIs are allowed because they're garbage.
Back in high school I used to play (and write) games on my Casio CFX-9850G (in the crappy internal "basic" type language). I know the games you can do on the TIs (especially if you are programming in z80 ASM) are far better.
... or physician. More information is available at one's fingertips than ever before, but more information is potentially available than ever before, making it all the more important that more information in RAM than ever before
...and I'll agree because that other guy agreed! Now we have consensus on this issue and everyone must agree too!
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
I just bought a TI-84 Plus Silver C for my son last night. It has a higher res screen with color and a bunch more memory, and it was $99 at Target. Dead easy to graph with too.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Most education should be free or very cheap. Sure, if you need access to a particle collider or DNA sequencing, these things cost money. But for learning math, programming and majority of other subjects, there are excellent free ebooks and software. We should mandate use of textbooks that are free online and free software that runs on most devices that would be available to student's family (Windows, Android, Chromebook etc). Even if minimum wage is $15/hour, the cost to have one person who continuously circles the classroom during the test and ensures that only approved software is used is trivial.
Then what we need is a group of mathematicians to get together and come up with a standard, just as we have the IEEE give us so many IT standards.
You mean like a "TI standard" or, dare I say it, the "TI84+ standard"?
I still have my slide rule that I used in high school... Oh, wait... I feel so old now
You feel old? When I was in high school math hadn't been invented yet!
I was allowed to use mine on quite a few exams. Basically all that was required was to do a (verified by proctor) full reset prior to obtaining the exam. Apart from having to come up with a strategy to backup and restore programs that I cared about, it was never really much of a problem.
e-paper isn't fast enough to play Galaxian and most of the other games. Sure it would improve the display, but it would also reduce functionality.
And the fact that you think evaluate sins with a calculator gives exact answer means that one of your teachers failed you horribly - sin(pi/4) = sqrt(2)/2 IS exact, .707... To however many digits is not because sqrt(2) is irrational.
Two issues with the $25 graphing calculator are build quality and software.
While it doesn't have exactly state-of-the-art electronics in it, the TI-84 is a beast. It holds up to the abuse most students put it through. If you made a $25 one, it would probably be built like a cheap Android phone. Those don't last nearly as long as a TI calculator, even if cared for really well.
As for software, I've seen plenty of graphing calculator phone apps, but none of them can hold a candle to a TI calculator. Color and the higher res screen are both nice, but they simply don't support the quantity of functions or programmability of the TI calculators. Someone else suggested R, which has a different problem: It can do all the things, but it's far more complex to pick up and use than a TI calculator.
There's a reason the graphing calculator app on my phone is a TI-89 emulator.
You are thinking of the 89/92's for calculus. The 86 had better stats capability than the 82, but 83 lapped it and 84 has a few extras thrown in there.
If I recall correctly, my HP-48 of an even older vintage did, so I can't imagine why a calculator allegedly from 2004 can't.
When I was an undergrad, most exams in advanced science and engineering classes allowed you to bring ANYTHING as long as it didn't involve communication with people outside the room.
What my teachers told me was that I could anything as long as it did not dim the lights when plugged in. Not university, I never went. :(
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
It is not a monopoly. It is simply domination, similar to Wintel computers back in the 90's.
It's ironic you used that example. From Wikipedia :
"Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his findings of fact on November 5, 1999, which stated that Microsoft's dominance of the x86-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly"
Here in the world of down under, electronics appreciates just like a nice bottle of wine.
I have yet to see a Casio that actually can.
Ezekiel 23:20
I doubt they would want to because Casio and Canon dominate in other parts of the world, particularly the far east. All the books are written for their calculators over there. If they tried to claim that the TI-84 was fair game for interoperability then Texas could do the same to them in east Asia.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That's pretty much irrelevant. Want to get a decent education? You're taking one of those tests if you do anything beyond an associates at a community college. That alone makes it so that the most common models, like the TI-84, will continue to be the standard and not be improved, let alone the fact that teaching materials, even in high school, are geared towards them as well.
Yeah, How dare students use the same tools they would use while in the field!
I beleive he was objecting to vendor.
Unless you use Adam Smith's definition. The guy who invented the concept of Capitalism and Free Markets. Free Markets require perfect competition. Perfect competition (sometimes called pure competition) describes markets such that no participants are large enough to have the market power to set the price of a homogeneous product. Ergo, this market isn't free.
A teacher I knew refused to learn how to use this TI calculator until she was paid for training class and overtime. I am sure her and many other teachers will refuse to change to another model without a 2 day class (lunch included) and time off.
The #1 reason a student is escorted out of a standardized test is having the wrong type (programmable) calculator...
When I was in grade school math class always started with a sheet of arithmetic problems to quickly solve in class before we even started our daily lesson. The idea was that we needed daily practice because being able to quickly add, subtract, multiply, and divide was an essential skill. Now calculators and computers have made this ability obsolete because nobody is tasked with doing a lot of arithmetic by hand. In high school I learned how to calculate square roots by hand and how to use a slide rule which are more tasks that are obsolete. I'd argue that if a certain task can be accomplished with a key on a calculator than being able to do it by hand is also an obsolete skill. As an exercise to understand the concept you might work through a few by hand but once understood abstract and automate it. If we need to limit students to crippled calculators than perhaps we are teaching the wrong things. The one time I'll admit to cheating in college was in statistics. After an entire semester of allowing any calculator in class or for tests my professor informed us on the morning of the final exam that if we had an advanced calculator we were only allowed to use it as a 4 function calculator. If he warned us before the exam I would have been able to memorize the necessary formulae but his sudden requirement was so unfair that I cheated and used the statistical functions of my calculator with a clear conscience. Had I crammed for the exam and memorized the formulae for the exam would I still remember them today? Of course not and nor should I clutter my mind up with what is now trivia. I do see some advantage to standardize for classrooms but were it up to me I'd have kids use Wolfram Alpha on their phone, tablet, or laptop. Cheap, easy to use, and powerful.
Surely your "stink test" can be carried out with the orders of magnitude presented in the reduced solution?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
The black and white LCD screen they used on the HP-50g is an improvement over the screen on the HP-48. It takes 4 x AAA instead of 3 x AAA which somewhat makes up for the lower power efficiency of its ARM processor.
I find the current HP-50g to be an adequate replacement for the HP-48. The screen is nicer, the keyboard is good, and its battery configuration is superior.
I actually consider this a disadvantage as illustrated by the following conversation which has occurred more than once:
Dude: Hey, may I borrow your calculator?
Me: Sure, here it is.
*I hand over my HP-48 calculator.*
*Dude is silent while examining calculator.*
Dude: Um, no thanks.
*Dude hands back calculator.*
For some reason, this makes me think of a Jedi building his own lightsaber.
Redundancy is good And also good.
Luckily for you, most of the higher-end HP calculators still have RPN support, although they dropped it from the CAS mode of the HP Prime.
Has your daughter tried anything more modern?
I remember using calculators like that in the early stages of being at school. They were a PITA to use because you couldn't see what you had typed and couldn't back up so the only way to check for mistakes was to run the whole calculation twice but at the time I didn't know anything better.
Then I got a casio "power graphic" which had a big display that could display everything you were doing. I found the big multiline text display far more important than the graphing features (which I found a fun toy but little more)
In exams where graphic calculators aren't allowed i've used casio "s-vpam" calculators. They are better than the old style calculators but nowhere near as nice to use as the graphic calculators.
Pretty much all the scientific and graphic calculators i've used have been casio across multiple schools and collages. I guess the TI fascisination is an american thing.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
But this begs the question why anyone needs a graphics calculator in the first place.
I much preffered them because of the large display that lets you check what you are entering without having to do everything twice and lets you see the last few calculations you did so you dont' lose your place.
Even the maths students at my uni were told they really shouldn't bother....
What calculators did they allow in exams?
My approach was that i'll use the best calculator that they will let me have in the exams. If they won't let you take a graphic calculator into exams then using one while practicing seems like setting yourself up to fail. If they do let you use a graphic calculator in exams may as well get one and use it so that you take maximum advantage come exam time.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I used casios all through school, colllage and universify and I don't think I ever killed one. Here in the UK they seem to be the dominant brand the TI dominance seems to be an american thing.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Depends. I would probably not have a good idea of what will happen when I push the "cosh" button unless I was doing it regularly.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Back when I took the SAT, they didn't allow calculators. No scientific calculators, not even basic 4-function jobs. Graphing calculators weren't even on the market when I took it the first time in junior high, and they had only been around a couple years or so when I took it again in high school. Now get off my lawn!
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Back in the day (1997'ish), teachers would yell at me for programming the TI-84+ during high school. I wrote programs to help my with the tedious parts of my calculus homework, and also wrote blackjack, Space Invaders, Pong and a couple other games all from scratch in TI-Basic. In the end I probably learned more from that than I did in my classes. Fast forward 17 years, I never went to college and have been gainfully employed ever since programming. I like to think a little part of my success is due to the TI-84+.
Perhaps TI calculators don't make sense anymore, but I consider my TI-85 (purchased in 1994) to be one of the best investments I've ever made. This calculator got me through undergrad, two Masters in Engineering, and has been used in every job. The calculator is still functioning and gets used on a weekly basis because It's really much faster for small calculations/basic arithmetic than R or Excel.
And then there's the countless hours I spent playing Tetris and Drug Wars on it when I was supposed to be paying attention to class.
Can someone actually provide me a link to examples that require you to use these machines? Real exam questions.
I find it pretty unlikely, a priori, that it would actually be quicker to set up the problem on a "graphing calculator" and then transfer the results onto your manuscript, compared to just writing it out directly on your manuscript. Plus, of course, you get the possible marks for showing your working.
OK ; maybe I'm old school - if I need a square root and I don't have a calculator or log tables to hand, I just Newton-Raphson until I've got the necessary number of significant digits. If I can't just get the root by inspection. It's not exactly rocket science.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Back in the Pleistocene, when I was in college, we used slide rules (gasp!) and then the skill was with three or four digits percision to get the order of magnitude correctly. That is a very useful skill, even if you need to calculate with more precision, to correctly do dimensional analysis and get that exponent correct. I'm sure that is still a stumbling block with kids today.
On the other hand, kids need to learn the new tools of the trade in science, how to present a document with reproduced results. I think that exposing high school kids to iPython Notebook or to emacs org.mode is well within the skill set they will need if they head off to college, and eventually grad school. You kill several birds at once, you get them to write about their results, justify their results, and you teach them coding for scientific use. This can be done on a laptop or tablet.
I understand the concern about the Internet for "cheating" and for social distractions, but I think access to the web outweighs the risks if a student actually has to explain calculations and results; that is the tool they will need in the real world from now on. I even think that non-science disciplines will be swept up in the notebook paradigm as it short-circuits the publishing cycle and it allows to peers to check reported results directly, with integrated text, calculations with code used, results, and graphics of results.
You're preaching to the choir.
And if that hardware doesn't suit you, you can always download PCalc. Highly recommend it.
AND, if you're on linux or another similar OS:
xcalc -rpn
Is pretty good! .