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The Reign of the $100 Graphing Calculator Required By Every US Math Class Is Finally Ending (engadget.com)
If you took a math class at some point in the US, there is likely a bulky $100 calculator gathering dust somewhere in your closet. Fast forward to today, and the Texas Instruments 84 -- or the TI 84-Plus, or the TI-89 or any of the other even more expensive hardware variants -- is quickly losing relevance. Engadget adds: Thanks to a new deal, they'll soon get a free option. Starting this spring, pupils in 14 US states will be able to use the TI-like Desmos online calculator during standardized testing run by the Smarter Balanced consortium. "We think students shouldn't have to buy this old, underpowered device anymore," Desmos CEO Eli Luberoff said. The Desmos calculator will be embedded directly into the assessments, meaning students will have access during tests with no need for an external device. It'll also be available to students in grades 6 through 8 and high school throughout the year. The calculator is free to use, and the company makes money by charging organizations to use it, according to Bloomberg.
The calculator is free to use, and the company makes money by charging organizations to use it, according to Bloomberg.
Sounds like it is not free to me.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Meh! Graphing Calculator we used (think it was an HP) allowed for programming on it. So we played games on it during class.
Then when it was time for exams, we wrote the formulas we were supposed to memorise into programs on the calculator.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
They've had a good run of doing nothing and not updating their hardware or software in any kind of meaningful way for the past couple decades. No other company would have been so neglectful to such a profitable product line.
A couple of decades ago it almost made sense, but now that every student has a more powerful device in their pocket already, it's ridiculous that they've been forced to shell out so much money for such an antiquated device.
It may be free for personal use, but in a commercial or educational environment it may require a license,
I don't think I've actually ever used a graphing calculator, but I do *require* one that uses RPN, which pretty much means HP...
On Android, I've been pretty satisfied with RealCalc as an RPN calculator (no graphing though). I used to use some HP-48 emulator, but found RealCalc easier to use on my phone. I lost my real HP-48 in a move once... it may still be packed away in a box somewhere. My venerable HP-15C was stolen from my car years ago, I've been tempted to buy a new used one, but $200+ is a lot to spend on a something I use so rarely.
I'm waiting for a kid to get expelled for bringing in his grandfather's real slide rule because the slide rule is an unauthorized "cheating device" not covered by a school board approved EULA.
You don't need more than a $10, simple, scientific calculator, it will have all the features you need. Instead of giving kids a tool that prevents them from learning the concepts, why not have them learn the concepts and provide them a simple tool to help them along the way.
When I took calculus, advanced calculus, and vector calculus, we weren't allowed to have a calculator in the classroom or exams, because once you got the equation you needed, in the right form, the answer didn't matter. This is how every child should learn math.
Even in engineering school, I don't remember actually needing my calculator for very much, besides crunching a final answer, which was a very small amount of the overall work.
It's free like Free Software but not Open-source Software.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Based on your UID (plus I know you've been hanging around these parts for a long while) I would wager you are not a student in a US math class. This story isn't about you, so maybe hover your finger over the submit button before clicking to decide whether you are contributing to the conversation.
If you are a student, or (more precisely, because we pay for these devices) a parent of a student in the school system, this story has some relevance, because it's about what the bureaucracy requires whether you like it or not. This is good news for those people.
You, Mr. Frosty Piss, can use whatever calculator you want. Have fun with that.
Then use one on your phone for free: https://play.google.com/store/...
So buying up all those calculators at rummage sales isn't going to pay for my retirement after all? Damnit!
https://xkcd.com/768/
The Fundamentals of Engineering known as FE or EIT only allows the use of calculators like the Casio FX-115 or such. They are $15 to $20 each, brand new, and can be found at yard sales or goodwill often for $1-$5 each.
The $100 calculator for high school is a joke, much like modern high-school education is a joke. There is no place where such a calculator as the HP-48G gets even the mildest of workouts.
This means this marketing piece by Desmos is just that. It isn't going to change the purchasing habits of teens who have to show off, because "keeping up with the joneses" is the stunning norm (and indication of huge educational failure) of American high-school in the same way the housing price-value gap in Chandler AZ was an indicator of the real-estate bubble.
Desmos is selling to the institutions who buy apple laptops for their students instead of chrome-books, and not delivering a value the student are looking to find. Kids who use the free option, much like those whose only meal is the government provided lunch, will be ostracized and scourged for being poor in an American school; for being poor and hoping to be able to do anything about it with education.
and so now the network / internet need to be up for the test??
If it drops will they add time even if they need to keep kids late?
Will an network drop force you to start over?
Will kids put down fun still like 404 error on there test?
unlimted student loans drive this as well as textbooks that get changed all the time with little real change but with lot's of profit / and kick backs to schools.
How is this phone app embedded into standardized testing, which I assume is done on normal computers without touchscreens? Using a calculator is clunky without a touchscreen - typing numbers using the keyboard may be easy, but clicking on other buttons (or memorizing keyboard shortcuts) sounds like it'll slow them down.
Based on your UID (plus I know you've been hanging around these parts for a long while) I would wager you are not a student in a US math class.
Wow. Just WOW!
Well, certainly I have been a math student, and its possible my children, who possibly vet their education expenses through me could be math students. It's even possible I'm in a MS or PhD program...
And whoop-de-do to you! If you want, you can use a graphing calculator, but just as an analogy, I learned to drive on a stick, and I can drive anything.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
So now they can watch you actually push the buttons on the calculator in real time.
I am sure this will be mined for scientific research about how students
solve particular wordings of problems in a testing environment.
It will also be used for R&D purposes by the SaaS company,
and ultimately for marketing purposes.
The information will not be adequately protected.
And most importantly, the human subjects have not really given informed consent.
Which makes me wonder what other information is already being collected.
Bob took 4:39 to solve problem number 117, and here was his approach.
Bob is therefore highly qualified for problem categories 114-A and 96-Y,
but performs poorly along the 191 axis of all problems with time limit G.
If the problem involves "donuts" his performance goes up by 0.3 %.
You always knew this would be on your Permanent Record,
don't say you weren't warned.
...If you took a math class at some point in the US, there is likely a bulky $100 calculator gathering dust somewhere in your closet. ...
Though I do also still have the HP-35 calculator that replaced my slide rule.
What more power could you want for a device that instantly spits out the answer you give it? The TI calculators aren't underpowered in the slightest, they are simply over priced.
As for "bulky" the vast majority of the size is made up of lovely big and easy to use buttons. I don't think any device would be better served with a context menu and a touchscreen or god forbid endless amounts of whitespace with every useful function buried somewhere 4 menus deep without context of where in in the system you currently are.
You could instead interpret it as a thought that students would be better off we we taught them to use RPN calculators. ...a sentiment I would completely agree with.
Real math majors used HP-28S calculators.
Brilliant piece of gear. Still works flawlessly nearly 30 years later. And of course, the best feature was RPN.
So take your Ti toys away, I've got real work to do.
(/h)
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The number of engineering problems you can solve with a calculator on a test is a much larger set than those you can solve on a test without one.
Our tests even had Maple portions of the the tests so that you could do even more difficult problems.
a hot air balloon ride.
Is that a euphemism? It's so hard to keep up with the lingo...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I still had my HP RPN calculator from college but it wasn't required for algebra I and II. Graphing calculators were required pre-calculus and calculus. I ended owning the TI-83 and TI-85 even though I didn't want them. If I had $500, I would have gotten the HP calculator that could play Missile Command.
We use it at the US Air Force Academy. It's completely free. However, if you want them to customize it, then pay. For example, it won't plot slope fields natively. If you want that, either figure it out, or pay them to add it.
The Desmos calculator will be embedded directly into the assessments, meaning students will have access during tests with no need for an external device.
Back when I was in school, tests were done on paper, written with pencil. Is that no longer the case? The reason I ask is: partial credit. If a student did a good job, showing their work, but ultimately got the wrong answer, a teacher could still give credit for the portions that were correct. Is that sort of thing possible on modern tests? (Unfortunately, the article doesn't describe how they work - it just assumes I already know.)
Hokey religions and ancient calculators are no match for a good smartphone at your side.
Not hotdog.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It is now common practice to do a full memory reset just before any standardized examination.
I'm wondering :
Nowadays with extremely powerful (relatively to calculators) CPUs available in very small form factors -
has anyone attempted to built one (say a RaspPi Zero) inside a calculator sell,
programmed to mimick the "exam mode memory reset" in a believable way, but then unleash all its potential to the end user (full blown programmability, ability to use modern math language like R, Octave, Maxima, etc. Scripting with Python/Perl)?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You clearly haven't read standardized tests lately. The figures are (I presume intentionally) not to scale (a 45-35-100 triangle will be represented by an equilateral triangle on the figure), some answers cannot be properly solved with the information give (ex: assuming symmetry, or parallelism which is not explicitly defined, or forgetting/having to ignore basic combinatorial math that is 3 classes beyond the level of student to "solve").
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm just feeling nostalgic... I knew a little about programming when I was in school, so I wrote tons of programs on my TI calculator. Basically, in every lesson, when I learned a new math concept, I'd write a little program that could do most of the work for me. This meant that I was learning both math and programming. Naturally, I'd tend to forget a lot of those math concepts after I'd finished writing the program, but that pretty much describes my day job now.
I still use my TI-85, twenty years later. Sure, it's antiquated at this point, but by now I've just gotten so used to the layout and functions that I don't know what I'm going to do when it finally goes.
There's a TI-81 around here somewhere also; that one I don't use any more.
Nope - Phones are not allowed during tests or testing.
Actual PE here; 10 years as rocket scientist, 20 years in private practice, 15 years as a consulting firm owner. HP48GX or GTFO. Of course I expect to be able to estimate anything to within 10-15% on a post-it, but when you have to be precise you should use a proper tool (and, to be fair, it's not always a calculator). They give you a cheap calculator so you can't cheat. In practice, if you don't "cheat" (aka use shortcuts and other time saving methods for things you know) it means you're not efficient. The calculators the NCEES uses are the equivalent of a hand file, a brace and bit, or a hammer. Good to have around, no doubt, but I'm going to use a bench grinder, a mag drill, and a 3 lb sledge when I come to work.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
There is not much substitute for the ease of entering in equations the way you see them written in books than the TI line of calculators.
Rather than schools spending $100 to get a physical device that will last decades, they've been roped in by Pearson's (of course) to a subscription model.
So now instead of having a small dedicated device that's exceptional at doing math and will last 20-30 years, you get to have a bulky laptop and internet connection and subscription.
Which somehow is cheaper for schools than buying TI calculators.
TI doesn't upgrade the calculators much because again, they're intended to last decades. They're not in the business of making things obsolete like textbook companies such as Pearson.
Maybe if Pearson could make a decent textbook that doesn't need yearly updates, schools could afford proper tools for their students.
Work Safe Porn
I still have the physics/chemistry one, it's got corrections pasted in it because they redetermined the densities of phlogiston & aether.
There was a maths one too. Maybe it's at my mom's place. I'll pop upstairs and look.
While it's nice to have the book the teacher emphasised that if you need to look up Sin^2 + Cos^2 you're penalising yourself timewise, and I agree. Your brain is the fastest cache there is.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This. As a Computer Engineer myself (Though I hesitate to call myself that, as I don't have my designation), in my view the sign of a competent Engineer is someone who can make an initial estimate reliably. Of course those are backed up by calculations later, but the first pass can always be a reasonable estimate.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
If you are a student, or (more precisely, because we pay for these devices) a parent of a student in the school system, this story has some relevance, because it's about what the bureaucracy requires whether you like it or not. This is good news for those people.
.
While I agree with you this is good from a financial perspective I wonder what data on students the calculator company gets? TINSTAAFL, and I would not be surprised if tehy "discounted" their prices in exchange for user data.
A broader question is does the test actually test math knowledge or the ability to use a calculator to get an answer? I graded papers at one point and would get 8 significant digit answers from 3 digit data and wondered if the students actually understood the concepts behind the problem or were simply relying on the calculator for an answer by plugging in numbers to a given function on the calculator. then again, I use an HP for RPN so my opinion is suspect.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
You had it lucky. I turned up to an exam one Friday and they said "you can't use that one, it's Tuesday's model."
Thank $deity for my trusty log tables & slide rule! But you tell that to kids today...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Because by that point, you're not expected to do long division and multiplication for every problem, you are only expected to know which numbers to multiply and divide, etc. Not that problems can't be made to avoid math that requires a calculator, but it's not just students that are lazy.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Why would you need to do a division? Use symbolic answer or make sure that all numbers are trivial to do mental math on.
We had to do graphs by hand - graphing calculators were explicitly banned. Generally they were easy questions. Find the roots & find f(0) - you know where it crosses the axes. Diff=0 for the minima/maxima. Double diff=0 for the inflection points. I forget now how you find the asymptotes. Disembowel a goat, maybe.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm surprised they're just now replacing the calculators in high schools. I graduated close to twenty years ago, and had a TI-85 and later a TI-89. It made sense back then, because not everybody even had a computer at home. Nowadays you can get a computer for less than the calculator costs, and all the kids have smartphones anyway. The only worry now is preventing students from using a program that is too smart and which does all the work for them.
Does bring back memories. I remember taking apart my TI-85 and taking out a certain resistor, which sped the calculator up a lot. Pretty stupid thing to do actually - I definitely wouldn't have attempted it if I had bought the calculator myself instead of having it come from my parents. My friend wasn't so lucky with the process and ended up bricking his. I did some of my first ever programming in TI-BASIC. Automating calculations for chemistry and physics classes, I think. Fun times.
It's sounds like a lot of dosh for something they'll use once, but why don't they sell them on to the next cohort after the exam?
You could plot the price progression on the calculator.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We had to do graphs by hand - graphing calculators were explicitly banned.
One semester I couldn't afford to buy a graphing calculator. I had my HP RPN calculator and did the graphs by hand throughout the semester, being the only student in that situation.
We were only required to get a TI-36x solar model. Those are far cheaper and extremely capable. They're also approved for use on the SAT and ACTs. Any graphing calculator was replaced by us having to draw the graph ourselves, which is how most math classes work from what I've heard.
Rocket Scientist here. HP-55c got me through school for every test.
Of course, we used computers extensively, but not during tests. Once wrote a little CFD program (Computational Fluid Dynamics) that sucked up 3 days of mainframe CPU time before someone killed it. The prof called me into his office. Rather than complain, he provided me with a login to the Cray. 12 minutes of runtime and I had my answers. ;)
After graduation, I was off to NASA for work.
The ability to use a calculator to get an answer to a math problem is math knowledge. It might not be the math knowledge necessery to get an answer if you don't have a calculator. But it is math knowledge nevertheless.
I don't see how a calculator with no physical buttons is superior to one that is a tactile object, and as the calculator is "embedded" into the test itself, that means switching back and forth between the two apps. This is a bad kludge that sounds painful to use.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
But if you happen to still have a bound paper Chemical Rubber Handbook in your college attic box, your grandkids will think it's the Book of Kells.
Based on your UID (plus I know you've been hanging around these parts for a long while) I would wager you are not a student in a US math class. This story isn't about you, so maybe hover your finger over the submit button before clicking to decide whether you are contributing to the conversation.
If you are a student, or (more precisely, because we pay for these devices) a parent of a student in the school system, this story has some relevance, because it's about what the bureaucracy requires whether you like it or not. This is good news for those people.
You, Mr. Frosty Piss, can use whatever calculator you want. Have fun with that.
Kind of dickish.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I both sketched and used graphing calculators. I don't know why.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
all the articles I've read have been short on details. How exactly do you do a graphing calc app without making it open to cheating? There's tons of these apps on the various app stores.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
there's better calcs than the 84. Kids pick it because if you get stuck your teacher knows how to work it. Assuming this takes off it'll become the standard for the same reason.
Math teachers aren't necessarily good with gadgets and computers. Teaching is an entirely different skill set.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Kind of dickish.
Welcome to Slashdot. You must be new here!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Attic? It's on my bookshelf next to me, and 34 years old. Useful for several classes in college and every now and then since.
Physical keys
UID pissing session? I'm there
The schools are more concerned about ensuring all children have access to the same technology regardless of income. It's not about smarter kids, it's about fairness in testing. And paying licenses ensures you get support, that could well save schools money compared to what they'd need to do to have embedded open-source calculators in their tests, which would require them to hire IT guys to set that up and maintain it.
Hah! Do you have a script running, or something?
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Wait long enough and start-ups like Desmos will be gone. But my TI-85 still works and I still have my data from when I was in high school, ... 20 years ago.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I never understood why anyone used TI calculators. I watched my engineering colleuges struggle with algebraic notation time after time, while RPN was easier and faster. And why would a professor care which machine one used? I still have my HP-41, as well as an HP-50, plus HP programs on my tablet and smartphone.
It makes sense to have a graphing calculator. Heck it even makes a sort of sense for it to be not so powerful but it doesn't need to be that over priced. It's probably the single most over priced item I own. This calculator app is nice but it's no replacement for a physical calculator for many reasons. I would buy another TI-89 right now if it wasn't a machine worth about $25 dollars costing nearly $100.
Just another second banana
The ability to use a calculator to get an answer to a math problem is math knowledge. It might not be the math knowledge necessery to get an answer if you don't have a calculator. But it is math knowledge nevertheless.
Good point; it does represent knowledge of a specific type. However, there is a difference between know knowing to use a calculator and understanding the concept behind it? For example, you could know if you want to calculate the NPV of an investment by plugging in the rate, # of periods and amount and get the right answer, but do you understand what NPV represents and how to use it in a practical application? I would submit a test that merely demonstrates calculator knowledge is not a god indicator of the ability to apply the underlying concepts in a useful matter. An adjunct to that is if the answers are in ascending order plugging in the mid value and seeing how close it is can let you deduce the real answer without even understanding the question; a skill that can be useful but not what the test purports to measure. One strategy for doing well on the math part of the old GMAT was just that.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
A monopoly is a monopoly, and will result in poor pricing at best, price fixing and gouging at worst. This should go without saying, but since we are all here, it apparently does not. The system fostered a monopoly, which fostered product stagnation and enabled a 20 year long price fix. There are a thousand tools to do this job, but the testing company allowed 1. (or a few, but you get the point) This allowed the calculator company to freeze prices amid a rapidly falling market, because they had a mandated customer base. To replace the calculator, we have a computer calculator, which will be again mandated, and charged per click. (or customer, or week, or year). We've have very carefully, eliminated the middle man, while replacing him with the middler man. This too should go without saying, but since we are all here, it for obvious reasons does not. The irony, is that this reasoning comes from groups testing the reasoning of our children.
It's really sad this was marked as -1. It shows how out of touch a lot of people are.
The number of engineering problems you can solve with a calculator IRL is approximately zero.
That was my thought as well. Because the cost WILL be passed on to the student.
It could even be more expensive than a physical calculator after the schools markup for the cost of the service.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I don't know. I studied math (MS level) and some physics but I haven't used a calculator even once. It was either symbolic calculations with trivial math or complicated numeric models here a simple calculator is useless.
It does seem useful for more applied sciences like chemistry where you have to deal with frustratingly real numbers all the time.
I will never dismiss the ability to use a tool with the argument that someone doesn't know how it actually works.
Since when is solving Calculus equations for you in three dimensions "underpowered?" I think the teachers are starting to be young enough to know a little BASIC goes a long way and can't monitor appropriately for cheating. I'd make my students use a slide rule. ;)
noob...
now get off my lawn ;-D
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Nonetheless, the ability to use a hammer to drive a nail is not physics knowledge. It's carpentry knowledge.
The ability to use a calculator to get an answer is not math knowledge. It's not even arithmetic knowledge. And, unlike using a hammer, it's so trivial to learn that it counts for nothing at all.
Like most of us here.
I never got a gold star for being average.
There is always a difference between knowing how to use a tool and knowing how a tool works (and creating your own tool is still another level). To get a nail in a wall with an hammer, you don't need to know about energy, inertia, impulse and force. And you don't need to know how to forge an hammer head. All you need to know is how to grip an hammer and how to hit the nail.
To use your nail example, if I want to find out if you know how to properly drive nails but let you use a power nailer on the test l do not know if you can actually drive a nail. So when you have to use a hammer in a situation where the nail gun isn't useable I have no idea if you can do that, despite testing your ability to drive nails.
I will never dismiss the ability to use a tool with the argument that someone doesn't know how it actually works.
Nor would I, nor would I confuse the ability to use a tool to solve a problem with understanding how the problem is solved and thus have the ability to solve the problem without the tool. This is especially true in situations where the tool automates the process and all the user does it punch in some numbers.
In the case of a multiple choice test, I would ensure each wrong answer corresponded to an answer calculated by plugging in the given values in the wrong parts of the equation. That way, at least someone who understands the concept might recognize an answer that makes no sense and check their work while a plug and play type would simply circle the wrong answer.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Got a "B" in it.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Students certainly deserve a cheaper variant, but the relatively simple environment for learning Assembly has become rare or complicated these days (there was something to be said for 640kb do-what-you-want RAM). It's too bad more schools weren't setup to take advantage.
You haven't been in school for a while have you? A lot of tests are done online already.
Did these 8 significant figure answers actually include the requisite steps to get to these numbers, or was it just an answer? If the previous steps were present and correct, then they probably understand the concepts and just forgot about sig figs. If not, then yeah it was just calculator skill. Now granted it's been 15 years since I took high school calculus and physics, but even then the teachers were well aware of the concept of only having calculator input skills and a lack of understanding fundamentals. Any answer that didn't include every step along the way was treated as 100% wrong, even if the answer was right. So I'd bet that if my teachers then were savvy enough to watch for that, then the ones now are no different.
I think when the new overlords get around to rebranding, we've got a winner for a slogan to replace "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
I know, right? Hammers are so hard to learn.
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
Did these 8 significant figure answers actually include the requisite steps to get to these numbers, or was it just an answer? If the previous steps were present and correct, then they probably understand the concepts and just forgot about sig figs. If not, then yeah it was just calculator skill.
Yes, they had steps as the class was an undergraduate engineering class the 8 digit sig figs bothered me because as engineers they should know not to specify a precision that is not there; that was the beauty of the slide rule besides its ability to function as a birth control device when you wore it on your belt.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
This is the case on engineering exams in my opinion. The available multiple choice answers are often ones you'd expect to get from simple mistakes like sign errors or unit conversions. You really need to know your shit or they will know you're shit.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I'm not even impressed until a mythological 3 digit comes into the discussion... Then again I was stupid and anonymous in the early days of Slashdot, so I can't participate.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
No, not lying. The current version of the TI-84 is just under $110 on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Texas-I... If your kid buys one in a brick and mortar store it's probably a bit more expensive.
And you can't use them during tests because you might use the smartphone to cheat. You're required to use one of a few models of dedicated calculator that the test givers know do not have any programmable features. Sometimes the list is limited to TI; other schools have slightly more inclusive lists that include HP and Casio models.
Those calculators have no network connectivity so the amount of data that the calculator company gets is limited. If you buy one at a campus bookstore it's possible that the store passes along some demographic info.
There should be a version of MathCad for Ipads and the like. Around since about 1985, completely WYSIWYG, and incorporating calculations, graphs, text areas, etc.; and embeded Windows-compatible objects from other applications. Most of all, one can store pages and make topic-specific page templates (e.g., for physics). These calculators came out in the last year of the Apollo program, which I was working on, and they were great then, but obsolete as soon as MathCad became available. Efficiency, discipline and legacy all available in one venue. The academic version is worth every penny if you are going to be any sort of STEM major, and will last you right through graduate school. There is a pretty good freeware clone called SMath Studio available on the web. Any version of StudyWorks from Amazon is nearly as useful, the limitation being that you can't build complex procedures ("programming"), which is almost never required in most lower-level courses.
On Android, I've been pretty satisfied with RealCalc [google.com] as an RPN calculator (no graphing though).
Unfortunately, Android devices tend to have wireless communication built it which makes them extremely unsuitable for exams. The better solution for all this though is to simply not allow any sort of graphing calculator whatsoever. School kids should know how to plot the basic functions like parabolas, cubics, hyperbolics, straight lines etc. without a calculator doing it for them. You can then replace the $100+ graphing calculator with a $10+ basic scientific one AND improve the standard of education at the same time.
I bought myself two Casio scientific calculators (one graphing, one not) for my math classes. Nice calculators.
TI-89 emulator for smartphones = free.
Those calculators have no network connectivity so the amount of data that the calculator company gets is limited. If you buy one at a campus bookstore it's possible that the store passes along some demographic info.
The TI doesn't but per TFA: the TI-like Desmos online calculator ...access via a smartphone, tablet or any other connected device is a different beast altogether.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
If you took a math class at some point in the US, there is likely a bulky $100 calculator gathering dust somewhere in your closet.
Back when I was in school, you were expected to know how to do this stuff yourself, and you pretty much weren't allowed crutches like calculators. Including in college.
Of course, everyone's all "Wah wah, why do we have to learn to do things that computers can easily do for us?" Well, for one, because you only get answers to questions you know how to ask. If you don't understand the math, you aren't going to be able to phrase the question, and, unfortunately, the vast majority of interesting questions weren't created by a professor trying to avoid flunking all of their students. If all you know how to do is enter the questions into the computing device, then you are an easily-replaced commodity.
Basically, by the time you're done figuring out the question to ask, I've already discarded that line of reasoning, and the next one, and the next one. Your competition isn't going to wait for you to apply your device, they're just going to move on without you.
Depends on whether you want to use them correctly or not. I have lousy hammer technique. It works for my purposes, but if I were putting a structure together with nails I'd be really handicapped by it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Don't they teach the sketching of curves, identification of axis crossing and inflexion point, etc as part of basic maths any more?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I used to write important formulae in pencil between the keys. Good thing I graduated before they took that away.
Right through my physics bachelor in the naughties I got by without a calculator. All I did in every exam was take each problem all the way to an explicit nunerical solution and finish with the statement "if I had a calculator I would compute this". Worked great and got great marks, and really never missed the things since high school.
"in the naughties" Freudian slip? Must have been a fun decade for you.
Back in the 90's, the graphing calculators like the TI-81 and TI-85 (along with non-TI's like the HP48) weren't so unreasonable in terms of capabilities and cost. My TI-85 survived 4 years of high school and all of college, though it got pretty limited used after the first couple of semesters of college when my math courses got advanced enough that it wasn't really very helpful anymore.
Unfortunately, a lot of standardized tests now are trimming their lists of acceptable calculators and are dropping older models, so if you bring in your trusty TI-81 or TI-85 they won't let you use it even though there really isn't reason they shouldn't.