Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end? • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by noer » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

iguy wrote: post #55

I'm surprised these are allowed in exams at all. Can someone who wrote such exams tell me what sort of questions were asked for which graphing was useful? Clearly there would be no point in asking many curve-sketching questions. In teaching, I can see the utility of sometimes being able to ask the computer. But ideally not a cheap computer from the 90s. And of sometimes being forced to do without. But in exams, where…

I may be misremembering, but I want to say I was allowed to have a calculator (a TI-83 Plus) when I took the SAT & ACT in 2003.

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

#102

Post by melq » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

As a reformed math major (that is, I've forgotten all my schooling), I think its worth debating whether or not there is even any value in having middle school / high school students use these calculators in the first place, let alone requiring them. In my hastily formed opinion, I think students might be better off learning without them. What does the average 7th grader need a CAS for?

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

#103

Post by __sy__ » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:30 PM UTC

Former math TA* here. What if the pb isn't the $100 barebone calculator but the way/medium by which math is currently instructed in the U.S.?

To this day, we're still teaching math with pen & paper, and require students to memorize concepts like how to differentiate functions of the form 1/x, x^2...etc. To test proficiency, well we give pen & paper tests and forbid most notes, but we still provide you a calculator because it'd be almost dumb not to. But given the prior rules about no notes, the calculator that doesn't have fancy note storage & programming wins, even if it costs $100.

But my recollection as a student is that math didn't entirely click until I started playing with Excel and later with Jupyter notebooks. Honestly, nothing quite like coding along a spam filter from scratch to really understand the basic principles at play behind Bayes' theorem.

In summary, I didn't love math in the pen&paper contest, but absolutely loved it when applied using a computer and some visualizations...etc. Based on my TA'ing experience, I am willing to bet most kids feel the same way. Mathematicians have long moved away from using abacus; maybe it's time our education does too.

Context: Former college TA for linear-algebra/vector-calculus/differential-equations.

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

#104

Post by Phillipharryt » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:30 PM UTC

derekp7 wrote: post #85

Phillipharryt wrote: post #18

Interesting that the TI-84 is mentioned so much. I am pretty sure this article is making a big deal out of nothing. I think this is a case of journalists reading "graphing calculator" and assuming the 84 is being used. SAT's allow CAS calculators, the Inspire is a pretty impressive specialist calculator and makes algebraic expressions incredibly easy. Any sensible student should be taking one into the exam or they're…

If what you are saying is true, then there is no way that TI would be able to maintain a $100+ price point on a $25 calculator. So that itself is evidence that the TI-84 is a requirement in many student situations. Even if something else can be used on exams, if you don't have the calculator that the text books are written to, or that the teacher knows how to teach against, you are at a major disadvantage.

You can't use the pricing as evidence it's necessary. It's possible it's both unnecessary and overpriced. All that matters is TI deems it to be a profitable price-point. They might be selling to mostly misinformed or confused buyers.

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

#105

Post by alxmdev » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

roland35 wrote: post #11

I am not a fan of the lobbying side of this story, but I do think that the TI graphing calculators are good products. They are very durable and easy to use. I fondly remember programming a multiplayer poker game in TI-BASIC on a road trip complete with a CPU player! I also would browse TIcalc.org to look for new games and utilities. I later bought a TI-89 Titanium which opened up the gaming possibilities! Check out s…

Graphing calculators weren't part of any math classes I took, but my first experience with programming was TI-BASIC on a used TI-86. Programming a PC wasn't really an option, but the small calculator felt personal and a lot less intimidating. It had an obvious place to start from and included all the software you needed! Of course I mostly used it to play games other people wrote, so much that I eventually had to get an 89 for the better TI-BASIC, TIGCC and all the software people made with it. I wish I learned about the GP32 sooner.

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

#106

Post by mark-r » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

Get used to it, kids. Wait until you see the price tags on those required college textbooks.

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

#107

Post by fireattack » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #82

adrianpike wrote: post #9

Timely thing - I actually dusted off my TI-89 over the weekend doing taxes. There was something about a focused tool with a physical number that I was really desiring. I have fond memories of tapping around on it in high school. Turns out it sucks, and I wound up just buying one of the $5 solar basic calculators and was way happier. I can't wait for this monopoly to get blown up.

Opposite story here... I still use my TI-89 (or my even older TI-86) from time to time, even when sitting in front of a PC that has R, Maxima, Gnuplot, Axiom, Sage, etc. installed. There is something about the format of those old TI calculators that I find oddly appealing for whatever reason. That said, when I don't have a hand-held calculator handy, I usually just fire up bc or R when I need to do some quick calcula…

What is bc?

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

#108

Post by clamprecht » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

jmcphers wrote: post #16

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…

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).

In prison, only non-programmable calculators were allowed. A friend somehow had gotten a TI-85 in. I programmed it to say "NON-PROGRAMMABLE CALCULATOR" as its startup message, so they wouldn't take it during a random search.

I also wrote a basic stock portfolio manager - this was the only chance I had to program during my 5 years there.

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

#109

Post by lopmotr » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

I used to be a math teacher, but somehow I don't know what the use of a graphing calculator is. Why do students need them compared to a basic scientific calculator? In one school system I taught in, you didn't even need any calculator at all for physics because we graded them entirely on their working and explanation. They didn't need to produce numerical answers. A calculus course I taught effectively didn't need calculators either, although they were allowed, but pretty much no use.

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

#110

Post by nextos » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #25

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.

"There are programs that even dictate which TI model is accepted." At this point in 2019, with such cheap computation, the school calculator lines are being sold as much on what they don't do as what they do. Around 1994 or 1995, I had an HP-48G calculator, a real scientific programmable calculator meant for engineers and scientists, where the rest of the class had the TI line of school calculators. The HP-48G could…

I started using an HP-48G too in the last year of primary school. When my secondary school forbade graphical calculators, I switched to a HP-15C that my dad had bought for his PhD in the early 80s. Fellow students used to make fun of RPN, a calculator without = sign was mindblowing for them.

I finished the university entrance math test in 12 min. This was mid 2000s. Lots of nasty calculations. Graphical calculators were banned too. They naively thought non-graphical calculators can't do numerical linear algebra or analysis. But a 15C is one of a kind. Second hand units are still crazy expensive.