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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?

#351

Post by jopsen »

ilaksh wrote: post #322
4gotunameagain wrote: post #160

> The company established partnerships with big textbook companies that integrated TI-specific exercises (complete with screenshots of buttons) into classroom curricula. It sought approval for standardized test use from administrators like the College Board. And every time a competing tech innovation came along, it lobbied to maintain its perch atop the parabola. Absolutely disgusting

I think that instead of disgust we should react with lawsuits and prison terms.

Maybe you should change lobbying regulation..

And join your local school board, at-least take an interest.

Throwing CEOs in prison won't deter the next guy.

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

#352

Post by krferriter »

jopsen wrote: post #351
ilaksh wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that instead of disgust we should react with lawsuits and prison terms.

Maybe you should change lobbying regulation.. And join your local school board, at-least take an interest. Throwing CEOs in prison won't deter the next guy.

> Throwing CEOs in prison won't deter the next guy.

We can at least try it a few times and see if it does.

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

#353

Post by wallace_f »

justinator wrote: post #233
russfink wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they care about a calculator?

Found the guy who doesn't keep good accounting of his drug dealings while in prison.

I remember watching the Troy Kell documentary and how they mentioned him OD'ing while in solitary. His only contact was with the guards. That must be the problem with how he got the drugs while in solitary -- the guards are allowed to have graphing calculators.

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

#354

Post by lancebeet »

clamprecht wrote: post #108
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).

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.

This doesn't seem to be an entirely American phenomenon. Gottfrid Svartholm, one of the founders of PirateBay, had significant issues getting a graphing calculator for self-study in Swedish prison. Graphing calculators were apparently deemed a security risk.

https://file.wikileaks.org/file/anakata/13.1_GSW_09042013_AP...

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

#355

Post by missosoup »

jacobolus wrote: post #250
cydonian_monk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 calc…

You can't really do problems of meaningful complexity without either a calculator or forcing your class to do a large amount of arithmetic which is really not what you're testing. And at the same time you can't really twist those problems around to not require arithmetic, without also making them abstract and too different from what's encountered in the real world.

Try doing matrix multiplications for hidden markov chains without a calculator. I dare ya.

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

#356

Post by jacobolus »

filleduchaos wrote: post #285
jacobolus wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Higher-level math classes” do not need “mundane things like arithmetic” at all. If there’s any appreciable quantity of arithmetic involved, that’s a clear sign that you aren’t dealing with a “higher-level math class”.

Before jumping to pedantry, consider that "higher-level" here is relative (we are talking about high school students).

This is not about pedantic correctness.

“Lower level” math courses also should not have excessive amounts of arithmetic. What arithmetic is included should be there for the express purpose of practicing arithmetic (at which point a handheld calculator is exactly the opposite of what you want).

At any point that arithmetic isn’t the point of the problem, the arithmetic used should be designed to not be a barrier or time sink. In pretty much any possible problem requiring substantial arithmetic where calculators should be handling it instead of humans, the student should be sitting down in front of a full-sized keyboard with a more capable tool (e.g. a general-purpose programming language).

Math students at any level spending nontrivial amounts of time with handheld calculators is a huge waste of their time.

Learning to fluently navigate a handheld calculator is not an important life skill, and has little to do with mathematics.

But once you get to pure mathematics courses at the undergraduate level (i.e. beyond the service courses math departments offer to engineering and science students) there is pretty much no arithmetic.

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

#357

Post by lb1lf »

macintux wrote: post #159
lb1lf wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in our high school equivalent, our maths teacher blew that trick out of the water simply by having us all clear the calculator memory, then having us swap calculators at random. Worked a charm. Next time, noone had bothered to hide notes as they didn't want to spend time helping some random sod out. Solidarity is dead. (You could, of course, try to counter this by having the entire class install the same c…

I’d be in trouble: I use RPN calculators, and am practically crippled if I try to use anything else. Of course, I’d probably not be in as much trouble as whatever poor sod got stuck with my HP.

Oh, we had one approved graphing calculator - well, two. The Casio FX-7700 and its big brother, the FX-9700.

Problem solved. Except if you happened to prefer RPN; I had a HP-48 which I had bought prior to the edict naming The One True Calculator - the day I enrolled at university, I started using it again, only to be met with a similar edict in my second term, naming the Ti-89 the only kosher graphing calculator.

Since I graduated, the HP-48 has been in daily use.

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

#358

Post by jacobolus »

missosoup wrote: post #355
jacobolus wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 calc…

You can't really do problems of meaningful complexity without either a calculator or forcing your class to do a large amount of arithmetic which is really not what you're testing. And at the same time you can't really twist those problems around to not require arithmetic, without also making them abstract and too different from what's encountered in the real world. Try doing matrix multiplications for hidden markov c…

Nobody should be using a handheld calculator for nontrivial matrix multiplications. In “the real world” literally nobody does this.

Making students do nontrivial matrix calculations on a timed in-class exam just tests their calculator skills. There are a wide variety of alternative types of problems which will better probe their understanding of the course.

If your students are trying to learn about numerical linear algebra, consider getting them implementing the relevant algorithms in computer code.

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

#359

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

brokenmachine wrote: post #223
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some prison rules are written in blood. Most prison rules are written in bureaucracy and profit motive. No prison escape movie ever ended with the guard preventing future escapes by instituting a new "no sleeveless shirts when visiting an inmate" rule.

Forgive my ignorance, but how do sleeveless shirts help facilitate an escape?

I could be wrong, but I think they're saying they do not, but many prisons have a rule against that anyway.

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

#360

Post by billforsternz »

thanatropism wrote: post #348
billforsternz wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a competitive chess player I have sometimes fantasised that there should be a rule allowing computer assistance providing you wrote the chess engine yourself. I've written a simple engine to complement my chess GUI but such a rule would definitely push me to massively improve it.

It should be fairly easy to setup a parallel Lichess (or whatever it is you use) account and compare Elo ratings?

Sorry I don't understand this comment. In case it's not clear I was talking about classical, over the board chess.
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