Full Review of the Color TI-84 Plus 233
KermMartian writes "The TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition isn't the first color-screen graphing calculator, or even TI's first color calculator, but it's a refresh of a 17-year-old line that many have mocked as antiquated and overpriced. From an advanced review model, the math features look familiar, solid, and augmented with some new goodies, while programming looks about on par with its siblings. The requisite teardown uncovers the new battery, Flash, ASIC/CPU, and LCD used in the device. Although there are some qualms about its speed and very gentle hardware upgrades beyond the screen, it looks to be an indication that TI will continue this inveterate line for years to come."
Lots of screenshots and pictures of the innards too.
The real question... (Score:4, Interesting)
Does it have RPN?
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Why is this tagged as off topic... Unless I am completely missing sarcasm or an inside joke.. RPN is Reverse Polish Notation.. which is most definitely on topic when it comes to calculators..
Because vi sucks, that's why. (Score:3)
The real question is why "offtopic" instead of "troll".
Does anyone really think "Does (some TI calculator) support RPN?" after 40+ years of HP using RPN and TI using standard notation could be anything but an attempt to wind up the tired postfix vs infix debate?
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I agree, it's absolutely a relevant question. As all regular calculator users know, Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) is a much more efficient method of inputting and computing complex functions or large series of calculations with a minimal number of keystrokes. Although it's not as common today, engineers of a certain vintage will probably remember with fondness their HP-41 Series [wikipedia.org] or perhaps even the HP-67 [wikipedia.org] or HP-65 [wikipedia.org] (for the real old-timers) programmable calculators.
Android (Score:2)
Is it to hard to come up with Android ROM to kill this thing once and for all. The kind of battery life this has can be easily had on a Nexus 7.
Put in a custom graphic calculator ROM and let TI RIP.
I realize there may not be such a ROM and the fact its highschool kids who use it, its unlikely a group with capability to actually customize such a ROM will ever do so.
Re:Android (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Android (Score:4, Interesting)
When did they start allowing the use of calculators during the SAT? I suppose about the same time that you could get a "perfect" score while still having some wrong or unanswered questions. OK...some Googling has shown my guess is correct, and also given me the conversions, so now I know what to tell young people if they ask what score I got.
Oblig: get off my lawn
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Re:The real question... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you mean, "RPN it have does?"
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You RPN understand don't.
The keystrokes reversed simply aren't. You operators place operands after. RPN notation infix is.
English designed isn't RPN for. Informative 1 + unintelligible 1 + or ? You decide!
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That's mostly my feeling on that. But, a color screen allows the calculator to be more insightful when complaining about format errors, it has an easier time of highlighting things.
And if you're wanting to graph multiple lines at the same time, that's a bit easier to read as well. But, I think the higher resolution on the newer displays, along with the better refresh rate are far more useful than the color aspect. But, once you switch to using a modern LCD, there's little reason to stick with monochrome, an
battery life (Score:2)
"Power: Rechargeable lithium-polymer battery, ~5-10 hours of use
Battery Life: Officially 5 days of classroom use or 2 weeks of homework use
"
That's really, REALLY crappy! for a 15Mhz, 1287k ram device! i would have espected at least ten times that!
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Given that my TI-85 used to run an entire school year on maybe 2-3 sets of four AAA batteries, having to charge the thing weekly (and realistically probably more like every couple of days with any real use) is insane. I'd have nightmares about the thing dying in the middle of a test!
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"That's really, REALLY crappy! for a 15Mhz, 1287k ram device! i would have espected at least ten times that!"
I've noticed a LOT of gear lately using rechargeables where replaceable batteries would have made a lot more sense.
Take outdoor equipment for example. I've seen a lot of otherwise high-end flashlights and headlamps that use rechargeables... and I won't even look at them twice. If I'm out in the wilderness for 5 days, a regargeable is almost completely useless to me. Same with "lantern" - style devices, and just about anything else that can be battery powered, like cameras.
I mean, seriously. For some o
what is this review doing here? (Score:3)
The target market for this calculator is high school.. How many slashdotters are in high school?
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Size of target market (Score:2)
target markets have never meant much to geeks
Unless the target market ends up not big enough, in which case the product never gets mass-produced or falls out of production because not enough people want it. This happened to 4" tablets priced for use without a cellular data plan (such as the Nokia N810 in North America and the three years of Android prior to Galaxy Player introduction in October 2011), it happened to 3-4" tablets with a gamepad (such as GP2X), and it happened to 10" laptops at the end of last year [slashdot.org].
Re:what is this review doing here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anecdata (Score:2)
Many of us geeks have gone on to sire progeny
You must be new here.
But seriously, you're right that many Slashdot users have younger relatives in their mid-teens, such as my younger cousin. So we have your anecdote and my anecdote, and the plural of "anecdote" is "data" [revolutionanalytics.com].
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The trend of dictating what does or does not belong here has come about because slashdot has changed from being a hardcore geeks hangout to a shitty tech blog.
Congrats on reproducing.
Color not needed (Score:2)
Why would anyone need color on a calculator? It just drains battery life! I'd rather like to see standard batteries with long life, a small form factor, tons of easy to use functions including CAS, good keys, and an outstanding printed manual. Apart from the form factor various older HP and TI calculators fit this description, but I'd love to see something like the Casio Slim but with CAS and RPN. ;-)
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The only thing I can think of, is if you're doing something with color / heat maps.
I've seen some stuff like that. But then again not for anything I needed to do, even in college.
Though breaking it down to a high school level, perhaps as an alternative way to depict 2D in a broad way. X, Y, and color-map to visually approximate the Z value for something really complex.
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Obvious answer: because games are better in color. Corollary fact: if you're fiddling about with a gameboy in a high school lecture, you'll get in trouble. If you're fiddling about with a TI in a high school lecture, you probably won't unless the teacher sees what you're doing (ever notice just how many variations on the "hide what you're doing screen" program have been written for TIs?)
Color makes sense. ;)
Yes, I fully admit, I played the *crap* out of Tetris in calc in high school.
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Well that's the obvious "demand" answer... kids want to be able to play cooler games. And of course TI realizes this.
But I'm sure there is a more practical reason... like an actual use / need for color other than a nicer UI and games. Something math / science related that would affect a High School or College student.
Though college students would probably want to use either a more advanced TI calc that's easier to program... or just use their Smart Phones / Tablets.
Geek summary - tech specs (Score:5, Informative)
Pity the article was too darn lazy to summarize the tech specs:
CPU: custom z80 @ 6 / 15 MHz
LCD: 320x240, 16-bit
RAM: 128K of internal RAM, 21K user-accessible
ROM: 4MB Flash ROM chip, 3.5MB user-accessible.
IO: serial port, miniUSB jack
Keys: 50 dedicated keys
Programming languages: TI BASIC, z80 Assembly
Pity people couldn't provide benchmarks of couple common integrals across the HP48GX, HP49, HP50, TI-82, TI-84, so we can see how fast it is.
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Apropos of nothing, but I'm sure the Z88DK supports the TI calculators, along with a lot of retrocomputing hardware. The Z88DK has cross platform libraries for things like graphics and I/O etc. (although I think the sprite library only supports ZX Spectrum and Amstrad targets)
Most important question (Score:2, Flamebait)
Is it $10 or less yet?
A state needs to contract out the creation of calculators to some firm and just get them for $10 a pop. There is no reason TI should be getting $100 for them.
Still Missing (Score:3)
That's the point (Score:2)
It is targeted at education and math teachers get all uppity if the calculator can do too much since they don't know how to effectively teach or test their students.
If you want CAS TI's color model is the nSpire CX CAS. More powerful overall and has a full CAS setup on it.
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What can it do .... (Score:2)
that I cannot, for example, do with Maxima and octave on my Nexus 7, much more quickly and without that feeling of being trapped in the distant past?
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It can keep a battery charge for more than a couple days.
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Thats true and highly relevant for people who have no chance to get close to a mains plug within 24 hours :)
17 years?!? (Score:2)
yea, but... (Score:2)
What does it matter? (Score:2)
Clearly the free market is not doing its job (Score:2)
Drawing on the screen has got to be really slow (Score:3)
15MHz Z80, and a 320x240 16-bit screen. Drawing to that screen has got to be slow.
Copying bytes from memory to an IO port is 24 cycles per byte on the usual code (ld a,(hl) \ out (n),a \ inc hl)
The screen itself is 153,600 bytes large.
So it takes more than 3,686,400 clocks to output an entire screen image, most likely a lot more time. This suggests the entire screen can be updated 4 times per second with unrolled code, and that's not counting the code needed to set up and get ready to output data to the screen, or generate said data. More realistically, the screen could be updated updated 3 times per second.
For things like solid color fills, probably much faster, possibly as high as 8FPS.
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Their Z80 implementation may not necessarily use the "classic Z80" timings. Indeed, Zilog's own current Z80 based microcontroller offerings are pipelined, and will get a throughput of up to 1 instruction per CPU cycle. The basic Verilog TV80 implementation of the Z80 also executes instructions in fewer clock cycles than the classic Z80 timings. I'd be surprised if the TI implementation has the same timings as the classic Z80.
There's also various screen memory layouts that reduce the amount of work the CPU h
Re:Emulate (Score:4, Insightful)
emulate on an emulator. On your smartphone. Free and better.
And not allowed in the classroom settings that these things are mainly used. Too easy to switch to notes/google/more powerful apps.
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emulate on an emulator. On your smartphone. Free and better.
And not allowed in the classroom settings that these things are mainly used. Too easy to switch to notes/google/more powerful apps.
It does highlight a major problem with our education system: the reason TI-84s cost so much is because they're required in so many high school math classes. As the summary states, they're antiquated and overpriced. Of course, the cost is negligible to middle class and well off families, so it's just one more factor that holds back those in poverty. Let's face it, there are a lot of bad parents out there who, given the choice between putting their child in a class that requires a $100 calculator and sticking
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Most schools I've been to that require those calculators, have some for loan or rent. The college my mother works at rents them out for about $10 a term. Which for most students is cheaper than buying their own. It's not until you get past calculus that they'll usually let you use a TI-89.
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Which you can do with a graphing calculator as well. You just don't have access to the internet. In some cases you can upload flash cards to them though.
Re:Emulate (Score:4, Informative)
Graphing calculators are typically banned anyway.
What evidence do you have for this statement?
The most you'll be taking a test with is a TI-30.
I guess my daughter's math classes (AP math and AP statistics) are outliers then. They're all required to use a TI-84/85.
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Re:Emulate (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, I totally agree. I can sort of understand the requirement for having some sort of calculating device that isn't also a smart phone, even though I think that cheaters eventually are going to suffer for the cheating.
I think that slide-rules should be brought back into the high school level. Some can be expensive, but not as much as a graphing calc and it's probably best to learn how to do the math with paper and pencil to really get the deeper understanding rather than "learn how to use the damn calculator first before you try and learn the damn math."
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I believe the OP was referring to standardized tests. If memory serves, when I took the ACT graphing calculators were forbidden since you could easily store all manner of cheat sheets onboard.
If that's the case, it wasn't clear to me. So, yeah, I guess that's reasonable.
My other comment was to bring back use of a slide-rule and all of these particular technological issues regarding cheating all go away.
SAT Reasoning (Score:4, Informative)
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So you're replacing one expense with another? Aft
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When I was in high school and college, we were permitted to use these types of calculators (in my case the HP 48G back in the late 80's early 90's.. I forget exactly when), however the teacher would walk around to each persons desk and hold in the factory reset button, and remove any mem cards (the PSION my friend used to have).
There was never any need to store formulas or anything, as those were provided on a separate sheet in addition to the test questions and answer paper (okay.. it was a huge sheet that
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SAT and AP exams, as well as all AP in-class tests, allowed TI-82/83/89s.
The 89 MIGHT have been banned on one or two of those, owing to its ability to factor algebraic expressions and to perform integration / differentiation.
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Graphing calculators are typically required in advanced math courses anyway.
FTFY.
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Most standardized tests where a graphing calculator would be useful, in fact require such a calculator. The current set of AP tests require/recommend a TI-84 or TI-85. The SAT itself highly recommends a graphic calculator.
Cool story. The SAT specifically does not allow calculators with a QWERTY keyboard. The TI-92 (the original one with the symbolic algebra solving system) had one and was, therefore, not allowed for the SAT. So, TI came out with the TI-89, which runs almos
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Because the point is to learn the math? The coursework is not designed to teach you how to use a tool, it is to teach you how the underlying pieces work.
Then they should be asking essay questions instead. Ask the student to describe how the underlying principles work.
It's ridiculous to throw a bunch of equations at the student and then say "no, you can't use the easiest and most obvious way of solving these, the method that everyone would use in the real world."
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Because a calculator won't tell you if you've gotten the wrong answer or give you a way of verifying that the answer is correct?
Yes, it will give you an answer, but without knowing how it got the answer, you have no way of knowing if the answer makes sense. If you do it out by hand, you can trace the steps and see if there was a mistake at some point and correct it if applicable.
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Graphing calculators are typically banned anyway.
There was a time when this was true. Now most high school and college level classes actually require them (in the U.S. anyway). And before you start bad-mouthing the current generation for how easy they have it, keep in mind that the courses have gotten appropriately harder too. You wouldn't believe how much complex graphing now goes on in even a basic algebra class compared to back in the day, when everything was still done by hand.
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My TI-82 was definitely not allowed during the SATs.
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Have you found a decent Android calculator app? I'm currently using "Scientific Calculator" by Rohan Laishram, but it has annoying syntax issues (like opening parentheses that need to be manually closed for certain operations and throwing a syntax error if you don't close them)...
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I use RealCalc by Quartic Software.
I tried many free calculators, but this one was so good I bought the paid version for a few bucks. Damn handy to have.
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Which means students just cheat by storing the formulas in the calculators. That is how we did it.
There were even fake reset the calculator applications.
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Is it really cheating, or are their tests simply flawed? It sounds like their tests ask you to answer poorly-thought-out questions that don't actually test a student's critical thinking abilities. Probably the typical, "Here's an equation right in front of your face. Now mindlessly repeat those steps you should have memorized in class to solve the equation."
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No these were just word problems constructed to make you use some specific formula. Memorizing dozens of them is pointless. In real life people lookup that kind of stuff everyday.
There was no critical thinking involved.
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The most difficult math course I ever took was my first college math course, Calc II with Maple. Why yes, use of the symbolic calculus program Maple was so important to the class it was in the name. We took our tests at a workstation with Maple on it.
When my adviser suggested I take this version instead of normal Calc II, I didn't hesitate because I naively assumed this would make the class easier.
Turns out that when you remove the time it takes to do the actual mechanics of taking integrals and derivativ
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Memorizing formulas is the easy part of learning anything, I don't know why that's the thing some students obsess about, and as a teacher I'd be concerned about students not memorizing things they probably should, but it's not the end of the world.
It's when they start trying to message someone to get help that I'd get really worried.... It's not likely to work as well as they think it will, but I still wouldn't want to have to deal with it.
Re:Why are calculators still relevant? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because teachers are paranoid the chill'ins will cheat in class. Anything with a radio is verboten as a matter of course, and likewise anything "too powerful" isn't allowed. Finagle forbid they actually spend braincycles on solving a problem and leave the arithmetic to something that's designed to crunch numbers quickly and correctly. Far better to keep them busy doing busy work.
Of course any smart phone today could run Derive in a DOS emulator and probably still have enough cycles left over to play Angry Birds, but that would make math "too easy." Can't have that...
Funny story: Talked to a physics teacher (high school level) ages ago in a school where they standardized on HP's line rather than TI's. HP's did infrared communications whereas TI typically requires a physical cable to "network" between devices. The teacher said one day he looked up from his desk during a test and noticed a bunch of mirrors and prisms strewn about the room with students carefully aiming their calculators. Being an extremely cool teacher, he said something to the effect of, "I know what you're doing, but you had to use physics to make it work, so I'll let it slide once. Get ride of the glass and don't do it again."
Magical Black Boxes (Score:4, Interesting)
Students shouldn't be allowed to use things they don't understand. Calculators are for solving thousands of calculations and calculations with large numbers. Students should know how to do the same work by hand using smaller sets of calculations and smaller numbers.
If you don't understand the math, you won't be able to know if the answer your calculator gave you is right or how to find the problem if it's wrong.
It's not about making math "too easy." It's about actually understanding math. It's about learning how to actually solve problems and think logically. Just plugging it into a calculator doesn't teach you much. Any monkey can do that.
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> Students shouldn't be allowed to use things they don't understand.
Congratulations, you just completely invalidated every driver's ed program in the country.
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And I really wouldn't mind that. Drivers should understand at least the basics of pistons, power braking/steering, and momentum, I think.
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Yes. I completely agree.
This would eliminate so many common and extremely dangerous misconceptions.
Just a few weeks ago I had an argument with a coworker who insisted that his massive SUV with all season tires could stop better in the snow than my sedan with studded snow tires because he had 4WD on his SUV. The fact that 4WD does not help you stop was not obvious to him nor did he believe me when I tried to explain this to him. He ultimately blames his ABS system for "trying to kill him" because "It didn't
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If what they want is to test people's understanding of the math, then perhaps they shouldn't be expecting that students simply memorize formulas and procedures without understanding them. If their students can answer the questions on the test merely by having something ready to solve it on the calculator, then I'd say the test itself is flawed.
Solving tedious problems is not the same as understanding the underlying logic behind why the math works.
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Find me a monkey that can look at a problem and determine the correct formula to plug into their magical black box and know which numbers should replace which variables. Explain to me how understanding (or not) the algebra/calculus/etc. behind an equation influences the correctness of the calculator's answer? Understanding how to frame the problem is the important part. Given the ability to do that, technology can do the math for you, and you'll get the right answer. Absent that human ability, it doesn'
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I'm not a mathematician but I do have an Electrical Engineering degree, and have done a lot of very advanced math - and over all those courses in university, I did not use a single calculator on an exam given by the math department. Paper, pencil and an eraser. That's it; that's enough to learn all the mathematics we know. Interestingly also, it was not until my first year of University that I properly seperated in my brain that the concepts and tools math teaches are fundamentally different from math "prob
Other ancient texts (Score:2)
It is a similarly absurd situation to trying to teach Shakespeare in a language you don't understand. It's not going to work.
Is it like trying to teach the Bible if you aren't fluent in ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek?
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In my physic course we could have anything (Score:2)
Who
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I have a good emulation of an HP48GX on my phone, however, although the emulation is extremely faithful (it's actually a proper emulation and uses the ROM from the calculator, rather than just an app that looks like the calculator) I'd much rather use a real calculator because the problem is on a small touch screen with no tactile feedback, it's very easy to miskey and I spend half my time correcting miskeys. Also, with the application up and the screen turned on with the phone, and if I'm spending signific
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Crunching the night's XP for PC's and henchmen at the dinner table. That's about it.
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Schools and tests. Even back before cellphones hit critical mass, using graphing calculators made life easier. Not just the graph, but having functions, program-ability, the history on a big screen, etc.
Now that cellphones are big... well schools still don't want them using the cellphones in class. Some don't even want them brought into the building. So you can't just allow students to just start using them in class.
Is he googling the answer?
Is he texting someone for help?
Is he using an advanced polynom
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Dedicated keys.
While every calculator is a computer, not every computer is a calculator. Having dedicated keys helps streamline problem solving when all you have is graph paper and pencil.
But yeah, Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, Octave, Derive, Excel, have pretty much replaced calcs. I haven't used my HP48SX and HP48GX in years -- partially because of the emulator.
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it's called "tenure"
The same professors have been giving the same tests for so long, that the answers are still available on old tripod sites. They fear the internet, not because it would allow their students to cheat... their students cheat all the time... they fear the internet because it makes it obvious that every bit of knowledge required to pass their class can be contained on a single webpage.
Any class that's teaching you a skill that you're expected to use in the real world, should allow you to use
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I've taught introductory calculus and we definitely didn't reuse exams.
There are some things you need to be able to have at your fingertips without having to google for them each time.
But even that aside, my big worry wouldn't be that they didn't memorize the quadratic formula or something, it'd be that they paid somebody to go sit on the other side of a chat session and coach them through the test. At that point we're really not testing the student any more.
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Since you mentioned it, what are the good calculator apps for smartphones? THey all seem to focus on a smaller subset of things, I'd like an HP48 or Ti89 replacement. Either that, or why not Mathematica or Maple or Derive on the iPhone?
Any suggestions?
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Though setting aside that, one thing people like about these dedicated devices the physical keys and large amount of space devoted to them. A smartphone (assuming one even has one. geeks consider them universal, but they really are not) will generally provide a smaller UI (display + input) and input has no tactile feedback.
As for
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We used them when I was teaching introductory calculus as a grad student in the 90's.
A smartphone's certainly capable enough, but I can still think of a number of advantages to a special-purpose calculator:
SAT and ACT demand buttons (Score:2)
Are we paying for buttons here?
You're paying for buttons because SAT and ACT demand buttons. It's like the handheld video game market, where the developer pays for buttons by navigating the developer and game approval of Sony (PSP/PS Vita) and Nintendo (DS/3DS) for games in genres that aren't very suitable for a phone's touch screen.
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Thus at 14, I learned that school was not necessarily about learning.
That's a little late to learn that lesson, don't you think?