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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?

#241

Post by swiley »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #225
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…

On the SAT you can use programs and notes (obviously you are not supposed to share test content, but there is no specific prohibited on the notes feature. I think the ACT says you are not supposed to somewhere in the instructions but they do not clear the calculators. Only time I've had them clear the calculators was for some state-mandated EOGs that you could do with your eyes closed. And it can't be that hard to bu…

> On the SAT you can use programs and notes

That is definitely a new thing. I wasn't allowed to use a calculator at all when I took the test 4 years ago.

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

#242

Post by westurner »

For $100, you can buy a Pinebook with an 11" or 14" screen, a multitouch trackpad, gigabytes of storage, WiFi, a keyboard without a numpad, and an ARM processor.

On this machine, you can create reproducible analyses with JupyterLab; do arithmetic with Python; work with multidimensional arrays with NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, xarray, Dask; do machine learning with Statsmodels, Scikit-learn, Dask-ML, TPOT; create books of these notebooks (containing code and notes (in Markdown, which easily transformed to HTML) and LaTeX equations) with jupyter-book, nbsphinx, git + BinderHub; store the revision history of your discoveries; publish what you've discovered and learned to public or private git repositories; and complete graded exercises with nbgrader.

But the task is to prepare for a world of mental arithmetic, no validation, no tests, no reference materials, and no search engines; and CAS (Computer Algebra Systems) systems like SymPy and Sage are not allowed.

On this machine, you can run write code, write papers, build spreadsheets and/or Jupyter notebooks, run physical simulations, explore the stars, and play games and watch videos. Videos like: Khan Academy videos and exercises that you can watch and do, with validation, until you've achieved mastery and move on to the next task on your todo.txt list.

But the task is to preserve your creativity and natural curiosity despite the compulsory education system's demands for quality control and allocative efficiency; in an environment where drama and popularity are the solutions to relatedness and acceptance needs.

I have three of these $100 calculators in my toolbox. It's been so long since I've powered them on that I'm concerned that the rechargeable AAA batteries are leaking battery acid.

For $100, you can buy an ARM notebook and install conda and conda-forge packages and build sweet visualizations to collaborate with colleagues on (with Seaborn (matplotlib), HoloViews, Altair, Plotly)

"You must buy a $100 calculator that only runs BASIC and ASM, and only use it for arithmetic so that we can measure you."

Hand tools are fun, but please don't waste any more of my compulsory time.

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

#243

Post by zaphodbeblebrox »

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…

Approved calculators on the SAT[1] include the TI-Nspire CAS, which can do symbolic integration, among other things.

https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/taking-the-tes...

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

#244

Post by nearbuy »

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…

The problem is they're selling you (for a TI-83+) an outdated 6 MHz Z80 processor for $100 when a modern 48 MHz ARM Cortex M0 with more memory only costs about $1. If the market was more competitive, graphing calculators would be about $20 and would graph 10x faster (and my TI-83+ was pretty slow to graph).

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

#245

Post by blattimwind »

spookthesunset wrote: post #238
whatshisface wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now the math department? They were a different story. No calculators. Period. Ever. Made higher-level calculus... interesting. When I took calculus the professor made sure that every arithmetic problem could be solved quickly. The trick he used was to carefully track factors when setting up the problem, so that the numbers never got very big, and also so that things had a way of cancelling (I can't tell you how man…

Yup. One clue you were going off course on a test in a high level math class was when all your numbers were getting rather crazy and unwieldy... Usually the same rule applied in physics exams too...

Except some professors / PhDs deliberately set up exercise in a way that they involve large-ish (3-5 digits) or stupidly large (9+ digits) numbers to turn otherwise trivial exercises mostly into a mental math test. (Another all-time favourite of mine was the guy who always included an exercise in his exams that required you to determine the non-trivial prime factorization of a four digit number).

Good exam questions can be approached in multiple ways and are not a mental math test.

Bad math exam questions are usually those that can only be solved using one specific technique or lemma (ideally one that was only mentioned in passing once or twice) or require a lot of error-prone calculation.

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

#246

Post by michaelmrose »

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…

The only way to have a way for OEMs to provide a proctor mode in the context of the test is to take away your personal freedom to use your device in all contexts. The cure is vastly worse than the disease.

It would on the other hand be trivial to provide a device owned by the school that Only runs calculator software without admin access. It would also probably cost at least a $100 per unit and be less familiar to students.

On the other hand it could be trivially used to say read electronic books/videos when not in use during tests.

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

#247

Post by agumonkey »

iscrewyou wrote: post #116
agumonkey wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's true that computers can allow exploratory and multi...dimensional or multi-representations of math concepts in way that can be very very powerful to teach. That said pen and paper is the only thing you need when you think. The current context is mostly absurd because we give useless tools at absurd prices. Make a rpi like pocket calc with a CAS and RPL (hp forever) or even newer ideas like js/glsl canvas.

> That said pen and paper is the only thing you need when you think. Anecdata, I occasionally design with CAD software. Working on details, it's hard for me to draw up(think up) the first draft in CAD. Pen and paper is the only way to get the thing off the ground and running. Basic things require the most basic tools. What i'm trying to say is that you are correct.

True but that's for large amount of semi simple things, not conceptual reasoning, right .?

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

#248

Post by [deleted] »

RandallBrown wrote: post #220
vkou wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing. There's not a single operation that you learn between grades 7 and 12 that requires anything more than a scientific, non-graphic calculator to perform.

You don't think graphing equations is an important function for any math done by kids in grades 7-12?

[deleted]

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

#249

Post by wlesieutre »

therealrootuser wrote: post #71
jedberg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

There was the little known, but powerful combo called "GROUP" and "ARCHIVE". GROUP allowed you to package together a set of programs. Archive would allow you to take that group and store it in the long term memory of the calculator. You can then "clear the memory" of the calculator, but can then immediately unarchive the grouped programs and get everything back how it was. That said, I don't recall my teachers ever g…

Back in Algebra 1 my teacher had a policy that you were allowed to use any program that you wrote yourself. More teachers should do that, though it'd get challenging to enforce if it weren't just the one or two nerdy kids taking you up on it.

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

#250

Post by jacobolus »

cydonian_monk wrote: post #77
pkaye wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wors…

Cheat-sheets are also far more "real world" than the fake environment many schools cling to. I don't know a single practicing engineer that doesn't have a note scribbled somewhere. My engineering school recognized this decades ago and adjusted accordingly. Now the math department? They were a different story. No calculators. Period. Ever. Made higher-level calculus... interesting. Thankfully I'd already had it in hig…

> Now the math department? They were a different story. No calculators. Period. Ever. Made higher-level calculus... interesting.

There is no reason for any math course at any level to ever need a calculator, period.

The point of math courses is learning to think, not learning to avoid fat-fingering tiny buttons or learning the specific crappy interface of some anachronistic antique machine.

Without an electronic calculator students can’t be expected to do as much mindless number crunching, so instead the problems can be made much more interesting, unique, and conceptually challenging.

Frankly the same goes for science courses. If people need to process data resulting from physical experiments they should use a machine with a full-sized keyboard and a real programming language. If you want something portable a slide rule is entirely sufficient for anything that might come up in high school or intro undergrad level science courses. The students might even learn something about significant figures.

I could plausibly believe that upper-division engineering courses benefit from handheld calculators – I have no experience with those – but foisting $100 calculators on every high school student is a tremendous scam.

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