Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ti-84 Evo

education.ti.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 503 posts

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#91

Post by cj »

badc0ffee wrote: post #52
vvpan wrote: post #38

We had to buy those calculators for highschool and it was a waste of money, felt like somebody must be paying somebody off to have thousands of students buy a device that they will certainly never have to use (and is of little educational value).

30 years ago, we had the option of the TI-82 Or (83?) and the 85. A bunch of the kids with the 85 were playing Tetris and some were writing little programs. I got the cheaper 82/83, and I don't actually remember using it for anything, even once, even though I did the IB track (stats, trig, algebra, calculus, etc).

How is that possible?

I wouldn’t have been able to function without it in school (20 years ago). But we also didn’t have iPhones.

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#92

Post by retired »

LeCompteSftware wrote: post #49
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A TI-83 was about $100 in the year 2000, and it doesn't look like it's that much cheaper today. I would've expected Texas Instruments to try gouging their very captive market.

But you can't divorce that from computing technology in general. A TI-83 used a z80 in 2000 and was priced at 1990's z80 rates, it was already gouging even back then! Now 26 years later the TI-84 uses an ez80 (or something something similar), which was introduced in 2001. TI has always gouged their captive market. It is just increasingly ridiculous when those students also have smartphones. FWIW I think these graphin…

This has a 156Mhz processor.

My lightbulb has more calculating power than that.

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#93

Post by frostiness »

hatsunearu wrote: post #65
sosborn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CAS capabilities are prohibited in the SAT: https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/what-to-bring-do/calcu...

Wow, they used to be allowed back when I was in high school. It came in super clutch for SAT but much more importantly AP. Our school mandated the original CS CAS and drilled us on how to use it effectively and I got good mileage out of it through high school testing and college. I lost it at some point and got the version 2 and I would occasionally use it for work. I wish it had USB-C because who has a mini-B cable…

As someone who also menu-3-1'd their way through the SAT, I'm surprised it was ever allowed. Super useful outside of school but knowing that a good portion of my classmates using Ti-84s were doing the same problems on paper felt rather unfair.

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#95

Post by JuniperMesos »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #11

What calculators are you guys using that aren't in academia anymore and don't need the "exam approved" limitations? Or are we all just using software on our computers now. That would be sad. (I've had a Casio fx-991EX on my desk for a few years, that replaced a broken Casio fx-991ES. Though designed for academia, its operation is burned into my brain at this point.)

The most common way for me to do basic arithmetic is by opening up a Python shell and using it as a calculator. This is what I typically do when I go through my finances every few months and calculate prices for things.

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#96

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

"Built to be a reliable learning tool, not a distraction"

They clearly haven't met a classroom of high school kids. Then again... I didn't have access to the internet in my pocket when I was in high school so....

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#97

Post by Groxx »

vvpan wrote: post #38

We had to buy those calculators for highschool and it was a waste of money, felt like somebody must be paying somebody off to have thousands of students buy a device that they will certainly never have to use (and is of little educational value).

Definitely. At the very least, given the slow change in which ones are accepted, a cheap rental setup seems like the baseline that should exist... but everyone had to buy their own for my schools.

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#98

Post by kristopolous »

balls187 wrote: post #85
kristopolous wrote: post #62

Show me a highschool math problem you can't do on a $12 Casio scientific like the classic FX-300MS https://www.usaofficemachines.com/csofx300ms-fx-300ms-scient... There's even knockoffs of it for $1: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809744184708.html I picked one up when the 99 cent store was shutting down. It works fine. Look what you can get for $20: https://www.casio.com/intl/scientific-calculators/product.FX...…

Generating a QR code to see the graph online is kind of cool, but also kinda dumb too. I mean, these days kids have smartphones, what's the point of a graphing calculator?

I'm with you. Some open source app is all they need.

However to answer your question: phone rules in classrooms vary enormously and the dedicated calculator is faster to interface when you're drilling problems in a homework setting

I finished highschool in the (gasp) 20th century so the modern classroom is certainly something I've had to learn

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#99

Post by Ekaros »

petra303 wrote: post #87
wyre wrote: post #13

It has Python? That's pretty cool.

It doesn’t have a qwerty keyboard. That would be such a pain to type on. For some reason qwerty keyboard calculators are banned in tests.

I think those were aimed at different market segments. And that would be engineers, professionals and working academics that is not students.

Generally limitations in education on what was allowed led to more limited feature sets. Where as full feature set that could be upsold with qwerty keyboard was aimed for different users.

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#100

Post by varun_ch »

kristopolous wrote: post #83
varun_ch wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

International Baccalaureate math has some stats questions that require a calculator that can do stats questions. Not really possible by hand in exam conditions!

The basic $12 Casio scientific has stats like mean, standard deviation, regression... Stats is a huge field, we're talking highschool level. I think it probably covers it

Oh that’s neat! Probably should’ve checked your link. Not sure what the advantage of the Ti-84 would be for highschool math, but the UX on NumWorks calculators is completely a game changer, especially with stats and graphing questions.

Maybe everything is possible on the Casio, but it’s so much clearer on the NumWorks (especially for eg. Physics questions, where you might want to retrieve values you calculated earlier with full precision, etc). Genuinely felt like a cheat code when I was in highschool. I showed mine to my teacher and they swapped the whole’s schools standard calculators from the Ti-84 CE to the NumWorks, which is cheaper too.

Post reply on HN