41–50 of 128 posts
Relative to other graphing calculators, I've always felt that Casio's offerings were a good value relative to TI- ever since TI captured the education market they stopped being cool and definitely stopped being a good value. I think that having Python is a neat feature. I have strong opinions about calculators in general, and have owned a wide range of Casio, HP, TI, and even some old/niche ones that only real calcul…
Relative to other graphing calculators, I've always felt that Casio's offerings were a good value relative to TI- ever since TI captured the education market they stopped being cool and definitely stopped being a good value. I think that having Python is a neat feature. I have strong opinions about calculators in general, and have owned a wide range of Casio, HP, TI, and even some old/niche ones that only real calcul…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with allowing phones into maths exams is they have browsers and internet connections, and can store thousands of pages of searchable reference material. The calculators allowed into exams are specifically chose because they do not have these features. My eldest is doing maths at the moment and has an fx-CG50, it also has Python but only a very stripped down subset of MicroPython with just the math and ran…
I never got the point of math exams that required punching in numbers into a constrained calculator interface. And while I was at school nobody enjoyed that either. (FWIW in the 90s I used a PIM database that looked like a calculator and allowed me to store formulas I was too lazy to memorize ;)) At university math no calculator is required anyways and everything can be done on paper. And when going to the supermarke…
It has been a great wonder for me that why US highschools seems to require expensive programmable/graphing calculators especially those made by HP/TI. I assume it was some deal made by these companies with the education departments of the states and administrations. In most other countries, students complete university undergraduate courses, let alone high schools with only needing a cheap non-programmable calculator…
Well, at least in France, those expensive graphing calculators are mandatory in high school and later if you choose to study sciences. Some of it is to avoid "cheating" (not using a computer during exams, a new "exam mode" was also recently mandated, with a flashing LED). But I am not sure why calculators are still that expensive today: https://xkcd.com/768/ That, while you can buy a linux-compatible processor for a…
It's a shame it has a screen that looks like it came from the turn of the century.
It has been a great wonder for me that why US highschools seems to require expensive programmable/graphing calculators especially those made by HP/TI. I assume it was some deal made by these companies with the education departments of the states and administrations. In most other countries, students complete university undergraduate courses, let alone high schools with only needing a cheap non-programmable calculator…
Most teachers didn't use the advanced featutes, disliked that students played games on them during class, and had to jump through hoops to tamp down on cheating during exams. Many parents also had difficulty finding an extra $130 per child to pay for them; the schools wouldn't provide returnable ones like they did with textbooks.
In contrast, when I went to college (also in the US), we got a simple one-line "+-*/^" calculator for the first few years of calculus, engineering maths, etc.
Personally, I learned much better with the simple calculator. Complex graphing calculators do seem more suited to professional use than education.
> Please note that MicroPython is different from the Python that runs on a computer. I once considered embedding MicroPython into a (software) product myself, but was dissuaded by the number of people who didn’t like being limited to a subset of Python. Instead I used Lua, which is much less widely-known but is small enough to embed the whole language. It’s interesting that Casio made the opposite decision. There’s d…
Relative to other graphing calculators, I've always felt that Casio's offerings were a good value relative to TI- ever since TI captured the education market they stopped being cool and definitely stopped being a good value. I think that having Python is a neat feature. I have strong opinions about calculators in general, and have owned a wide range of Casio, HP, TI, and even some old/niche ones that only real calcul…
I don't know about the current situation but about 10 year ago, the TIs with their functional setup were _multiple_ orders of magnitude more powerful than their Casio competitors. You could chain an arbitrary amount of functions. With the Casio, when there was no special mask for your purpose, you've been out of luck. Anyway, I still use my TI-84 Plus, meanwhile virtually on my smartphone using Wabbitemu [1]. [1] htt…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your position is unrealistic for an education setting. You’re proposing working computers and smartphones for every desk and student. Computers and apps are not standardised at all. Disparity between them and compatibility issues are a massive contention when you have lots of people to educate. Not only that, even today here in the UK, not every student has a smartphone or a home computer so you’re instantly…
You are saying that there exists a segment of the college student population that will spend 100$ on a scientific calculator but does not own a smartphone?