Conclusion from reading HN comments: very few used the calculator to actually calculate anything
Ti-84 Evo
451–460 of 503 posts
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
I learned programming on that calculator. I learned programming because of that calculator. I owe so much to that calculator.
Same. I distinctly remember my teachers having a debate around whether or not the functions I had programmed into my calculator were "cheating". On one hand, it was a tool and notes that I had access to my peers did not. On the other hand, I had created those tools myself, and if school was supposed to train me for the real world, wouldn't I be able to use the tools I created in the real world?
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah there's not really a purpose for advanced calculators anymore (apart from the niche market of people who just enjoy using them). Calculators are basically only a thing now to make it harder to cheat on exams. If you don't have that constraint, you might as well use Wolfram or Matlab or whatever.
Or, here's a wild idea - exam problems should be structured such that they do not require any advanced calculator. Math problems should not require any calculator. Physics problems should require a scientific calculator. Overcomplicating the arithmetic shouldn't be the point.
Teaching students to use lookup tables at all is a largely pointless exercise. Teaching students to graph or use statistical functions on an advanced calculator transfers very well to other environments.
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again, I think you're entirely off base here. Maybe you are status driven enough that you can't wrap your head around someone who isn't, but I'm really just not interested in it. I want to give my family a comfortable life and spend time with them. That's it. To color that a little, I've literally told the last 4 managers I've had very explicitly that I'm not at all interested in career advancement. When I was asked…
>Again, I think you're entirely off base here. Maybe you are status driven enough that you can't wrap your head around someone who isn't, but I'm really just not interested in it. I want to give my family a comfortable life and spend time with them. That's it. Read carefully the part about science. Status seeking is inherit in biology... it's tied to serotonin levels in your blood. When you say you don't seek status…
Don't know what to tell you. I'm not the first person to not be interested in "the rat race" (hence the pejorative term for it existing). People like Emerson have probably made the case better than I can. I'm not interested in getting the most women. Actually that sounds gross to me. I instead found the best woman, and fortunately she's also not big on status seeking, and agrees she'd rather have more time with me than me making more money or having a bigger title. My work is a side plot in our lives; my primary title is "Dad".
Unclear how my criticism of a theoretical teacher (or more generally adult) who competes with the children they're supposed to be supporting is a direct attack on you? Self-report? If you're insecure about a literal child's abilities, the solution is to grow your own and show the child that everyone can always be improving, and there are always new things to learn. Or just be happy for their good fortune. Hamstringing them to make up for one's own hangups is clearly narcissist behavior.
It's also not just management. I don't want to climb the IC ladder either. It means more work, more stress, more responsibility, etc. for a relatively small amount of more money. I already make enough money, and I work for money, not status. That money is to pay for things we need like a house. Then once we have what we need, I plan to retire early and spend more time with my family. Maybe find some volunteer work that we could do together. That's it. Work is a side chapter, not my life.
My wife is also on board with this. She was unsure what it would be like when I transitioned to full remote, but then I did and she realized she likes being around me all the time, and wants me to quit once we've paid for the things we need.
I don't think they would be happy homeless so it's somewhat of a silly question. I try to set them up for success and what I think will help them be happy, but that of course includes showing them how to stay grounded. I do hope they'll have modest wants so that it's easy for them to see life as the gift it is.
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#455156MHz and 3,5MB user memory... Why do I feel like that is a joke these days.. I think some ESP32s are faster and have more memory, but not sure if they are fully comparable...
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#456My TI-85 story. While I was in prison, around 1996 or 1997, I found out a friend had a TI-85 calculator. I realized it was programmable, so I borrowed it over the weekend and wrote a program to track his stock portfolio. It was the first time I had programmed anything in 2 or 3 years. Then I learned that the US Bureau of Prisons had a rule against any calculator (or device) that was "programmable". So I programmed th…
You're a hero of mine so here is my story. Me in math class in 1996 - I had a TI-82 things are programmable so I have no formal education, my parents are illiterate, and taught myself to program, and I begged them to buy me one. I spent time learning how to code on it, writing from scratch, the game Spyhunter. I couldn't figure out how to draw with lines or pixels so I used ASCII or text. I presented this to my teach…
h = a
a = b
b = h
But I knew the BASIC we used had the SWAP command. On an exam, I used SWAP A,B instead of the above. I got the lowest passing score, a 70%, and the teacher wrote, "Do it our way please". No thanks Mrs. Mott, I'll take the 70.Re: Ti-84 Evo
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, here's a wild idea - exam problems should be structured such that they do not require any advanced calculator. Math problems should not require any calculator. Physics problems should require a scientific calculator. Overcomplicating the arithmetic shouldn't be the point.
That rules out classes of problem which we want to teach, or falls back to using lookup tables which is more arduous and limits the number of problems which can be put on an exam. Teaching students to use lookup tables at all is a largely pointless exercise. Teaching students to graph or use statistical functions on an advanced calculator transfers very well to other environments.
Does it? Could you give a contrived example of a high school problem that would be ruled out by a lack of a graphing calculator?
> Teaching students to graph
They should be able to plot any of the functions they'll be working with by hand, very quickly.
> statistical functions
If they are using statistics, they should be able to provide the relevant combinatorial coefficients as the answer (xCy, etc), without actually doing the computation.
Not to mention that scientific calculators all support basic stats functions.
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Again, I think you're entirely off base here. Maybe you are status driven enough that you can't wrap your head around someone who isn't, but I'm really just not interested in it. I want to give my family a comfortable life and spend time with them. That's it. Read carefully the part about science. Status seeking is inherit in biology... it's tied to serotonin levels in your blood. When you say you don't seek status…
Everything behavioral or psychological science adjacent tends to be "barely science" but sure. Don't know what to tell you. I'm not the first person to not be interested in "the rat race" (hence the pejorative term for it existing). People like Emerson have probably made the case better than I can. I'm not interested in getting the most women. Actually that sounds gross to me. I instead found the best woman, and fort…
Your arguments aren't even science. Barely but sure? What about your own anecdotal statements? That's even less reliable. If the science is all we got, then it's the best we got.
>Don't know what to tell you. I'm not the first person to not be interested in "the rat race" (hence the pejorative term for it existing). People like Emerson have probably made the case better than I can. I'm not interested in getting the most women. Actually that sounds gross to me. I instead found the best woman, and fortunately she's also not big on status seeking, and agrees she'd rather have more time with me than me making more money or having a bigger title. My work is a side plot in our lives; my primary title is "Dad".
We can frame it in terms of the science. You do seek status, but like many you have the inability to pay the cost of reaching higher social status levels, so like many settle for some sort of middle ground. It's extremely common. When you have kids, a huge portion of your "status seeking" shifts to the status of your kids. You work to promote their status in life and you derive a lot of pride from that. In the end it's still status seeking. Whether you seek it for yourself or your genetic future, evolution built you that way.
>Unclear how my criticism of a theoretical teacher (or more generally adult) who competes with the children they're supposed to be supporting is a direct attack on you? Self-report? If you're insecure about a literal child's abilities, the solution is to grow your own and show the child that everyone can always be improving. Or just be happy for their good fortune. Hamstringing them to make up for one's own hangups is clearly narcissist behavior.
It's very clear. You said I sound like a narcissist. That is clearly an attack. It's like if I said your statement sounds like it was said by an idiot. That's also an attack. But it's sort of indirect attacks that skirt around the rules. I didn't say you were an "idiot"... I said your "statement" sounds like it was said by an "idiot". I just cut through the bullshit and went for the intent of the statement.
>If you're insecure about a literal child's abilities, the solution is to grow your own and show the child that everyone can always be improving.
No one is insecure about a child's abilities. They're insecure about their OWN ability to help children. That is the source of the person saying that calculators are "not for games". The person saying that needs an excuse for himself to qualify as a teacher. It happens so fast the person saying that doesn't even realize why.
>It's also not just management. I don't want to climb the IC ladder either. It means more work, more stress, more responsibility, etc. for a relatively small amount of more money.
I've already pointed this out. You're not willing to pay the cost so you settle.
>My wife is also on board with this. She was unsure what it would be like when I transitioned to full remote, but then I did and she realized she likes being around me all the time, and wants me to quit once we've paid for the things we need.
She settled too. Most people in life settle. Top alpha status is hard to get and their are huge costs in getting that status. Everybody wants it, but they just don't want to pay the price.
>I don't think they would be happy homeless so it's somewhat of a silly question. I try to set them up for success and what I think will help them be happy, but that of course includes showing them how to stay grounded. I do hope they'll have modest wants so that it's easy for them to see life as the gift it is.
So they seek status. Because they won't be happy homeless as being homeless is low status.
>I try to set them up for success and what I think will help them be happy
So you think success (aka status seeking) is intrinsically tied to your children's happiness. Stop signalling bro. You're own language and statements reveal yourself.
>I do hope they'll have modest wants so that it's easy for them to see life as the gift it is.
Again this is the evolutionary strategy of "settling". Your passing your own status seeking strategy to your children. And your strategy is based off of "cost" it is not based off of a lack of desire for status. Again, you think optimal cost/benefit ratio is to be a SWE or something. Some people target something lower then that like janitorial engineering. But if status fell on each of your laps for free, you'd take it.
Also it's not just cost/benefit. Status also measures capability. You and your children may be incapable of getting the statuses you want so you settle. When a person is unable to talk about their own weaknesses and lack of ability to get the status they want, then I know they intrinsically seek status. That's why your anecdotal statement of how you turned down a management opportunity even though everyone wanted you to be manager is kind of off. You were humble bragging and bragging is a form of status projecting.
Again, if you truly don't seek status... tell me about something shameful and pathetic about you that if people in general knew about it would lower your status.... can you do that? If not, then that's my point. You, everyone, and that teacher seeks status and the way they talk and what truths they admit to themselves is a result of THAT status seeking. To characterize that teacher as some kind of narcissist or evil person is a complete lack of empathy and misunderstanding of human nature.
Keep in mind, this is the internet, anything you say here doesn't really affect your status in real life. So you're not doing anything in reality to affect your status. But it's still tangible evidence because I believe that status seeking in biology is so strong it will affect your ability to even say something extremely shameful and pathetic on an anonymous forum. Your genetics and behavior were evolved for a time when humans didn't have internet so it doesn't account for this loop hole where you can write and say things publicly that don't affect your status... hence why I'm sure you're gonna maintain your idealistic frame here.
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
That rules out classes of problem which we want to teach, or falls back to using lookup tables which is more arduous and limits the number of problems which can be put on an exam. Teaching students to use lookup tables at all is a largely pointless exercise. Teaching students to graph or use statistical functions on an advanced calculator transfers very well to other environments.
> That rules out classes of problem which we want to teach Does it? Could you give a contrived example of a high school problem that would be ruled out by a lack of a graphing calculator? > Teaching students to graph They should be able to plot any of the functions they'll be working with by hand, very quickly. > statistical functions If they are using statistics, they should be able to provide the relevant combinato…
Which is fine, you have an idiosyncratic view of modern mathematical pedagogy (at least as it exists in the US). When you're a high school math teacher you can argue with your state dept. of ed. about it.
These calculators are also used at the undergrad level, fwiw, so the "high school level" (whatever limit you're putting on that, many high schools will accelerate students into undergrad stats and as far as Calc II), is not a factor in their use overall.
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#460About 25 years ago my parents got me a Ti84 as a surprise for Christmas and they hid it in the attic so I couldn't find it in the meantime. A few months went by and a couple days before Christmas, when it was time to wrap the presents they couldn't find it anymore. My dad went out and got a Casio something as a late minute replacement, and that was the calculator I used in high school and I never knew about this stor…
Best gift ever. I could finish all numeric methods tests in a fraction of the time it took for others to use or program the ordinary calculators. It was a huge qualitative leap.