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Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end?

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Re: Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end?

#31

Post by lozaning »

eurleif wrote: post #12
jedberg wrote: post #7

This can be summed up pretty easily. The TI graphing calculator has no internet access and no ability to store notes. Neither ability can be easily added. As long as that is the case, they will win, because the test companies don't want to deal with people having internet access and notes. Now if Apple/Android made a simple way for a test proctor to put your phone into a single app only that you couldn't easily break…

> no ability to store notes What? It can run custom programs. Of course it can store notes.

Hell I had a buddy in high school that went through and wrote a custom program that's only function was to perfectly 'emulate' the entire calculators menu system, so that when asked to demonstrate that he had no notes or programs, he could go through the entire process of showing nothing being archived and then wiping the memory.

Dude wound up in the Stanford CS program after high school, so clearly he learned something.

Re: Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end?

#32

Post by jedberg »

lozaning wrote: post #31
eurleif wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no ability to store notes What? It can run custom programs. Of course it can store notes.

Hell I had a buddy in high school that went through and wrote a custom program that's only function was to perfectly 'emulate' the entire calculators menu system, so that when asked to demonstrate that he had no notes or programs, he could go through the entire process of showing nothing being archived and then wiping the memory. Dude wound up in the Stanford CS program after high school, so clearly he learned someth…

I did that too.

Re: Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end?

#33

Post by sct202 »

How is there not a giant 2nd hand marketplace of TI graphing calculators for super cheap? Like after 30 years of basically producing a functionally identical product that few people need after college, there should be cheap used graphing calculators everywhere.

Re: Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end?

#34

Post by melq »

jedberg wrote: post #14
eurleif wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no ability to store notes What? It can run custom programs. Of course it can store notes.

That's why I said "easily". Yeah you can store programs, but they're really hard to write, and most test proctors know how to clear the memory on a TI calculator, which they require you to do before a test.

Anecdotal, and I have been out of school for 5 years or so, but I never once had a teacher or proctor clear the memory on my calculator. Also, storing notes on a TI calc is trivial, you don't need any programming knowledge to do so.

Re: Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end?

#35

Post by michaelmior »

jedberg wrote: post #14
eurleif wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no ability to store notes What? It can run custom programs. Of course it can store notes.

That's why I said "easily". Yeah you can store programs, but they're really hard to write, and most test proctors know how to clear the memory on a TI calculator, which they require you to do before a test.

Is the program required to be syntactically valid? I assume not in which case you can just type your notes into the program editor.

Re: Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end?

#36

Post by Robotbeat »

frostburg wrote: post #6
borgel wrote: post #2

Approximately related, I find the NumWorks calculator [1] absolutely enthralling. It has a fairly beefy modern ARM Cortex M4 processor which runs an attractive GUI written in Python. And yes, you can write and run Python on the device. The hardware is very well described [2] in human terms and electrical schematics are available. Software is totally open source and the device can be easily reflashed. I'm not sure wha…

It's nice but as far as I know it doesn't have a real CAS despite its processing power.

The TI-89 series' CAS is really impressive, particularly since it was released over 20 years ago with automatic equation formatting and a powerful unit subsystem.

The price of this is worth it for the software alone.

Re: Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end?

#37

Post by fwip »

jedberg wrote: post #14
eurleif wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no ability to store notes What? It can run custom programs. Of course it can store notes.

That's why I said "easily". Yeah you can store programs, but they're really hard to write, and most test proctors know how to clear the memory on a TI calculator, which they require you to do before a test.

Your program doesn't have to be valid BASIC.

It can just be a text document, open it up with the editor.

Re: Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end?

#38

Post by zelos »

droithomme wrote: post #29

Casio makes several graphing calculators that are cheaper and faster than the TIs. $70 gets you the top color one that can run Python programs and is test compliant - it has a flashing test mode that disables all user memory. But the $35 b&w one works just as well for tests. So low income parents can get a good graphing calculator that does it all for around 1/4 the price of the recommended TIs. Students fear Casio b…

Casio was the standard graphing calculator over here in the U.K. back when I did A levels in the 90s.

Re: Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end?

#39

Post by pkaye »

jedberg wrote: post #21
jmcphers wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily store notes on a TI calculator. I had a TI-85 in college, and was occasionally guilty of writing TI-BASIC programs to make tests easier (for example, I had one which computed Euler's method).

Most test proctors make you clear your memory before a test in high school. In college they don't care as much because they are used to making "open book tests".

Yes most of my engineering classes back in college allowed you to use a cheat-sheet. Cheat sheets are way faster than thumbing through a book or notes in a calculator. And most problems required you to show your work. Maybe you could cross-check your results and fix something.

The funny thing is to an extent, the performance of the student seems to be inversely proportional to the density of the cheat-sheet.

The worse thing you can request of a professor is to make it an "open book" test. Those tests are always damm hard.

Re: Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end?

#40

Post by fwip »

gnulinux wrote: post #10
5trokerac3 wrote: post #4

TI calculators are the biggest technology racket in education. The fact alone that most schools won't allow the use of Casio equivalents deserves an anti-trust investigation. There are programs that even dictate which TI model is accepted.

When I was taking my AP finals, the school I'll attend them in gave me a list of models they will accept. My school does NOT have AP system, so I had to take it in a different school (which is the only school supports it in my country), thus I had 0 leverage. I didn't have one of the calculators they allow (some other Casio model), I called them and they told me I'll be rejected to take the exam. I had to buy another…

That sucks. In my experience, kids who didn't have them were offered loaners for the duration of the test.
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