The whole argument for graphing calculators and not phones is that the calculators are bad.
You can’t easily cripple a phone that a kid brings into a test, but TIs are so crummy that proctors don’t have to worry much about cheating.
There is always the question why kids are getting standardized tests that focus on the specific things that TIs can do. It’s not that the subject matter is bad, exactly, but it’s weird that this approach has edged out all other alternatives for so many kids.
The answer appears in part that TI has been spending tons on lobbying for these specific tests and for blocking any other devices so they can continue to sell $100+ dollar devices to millions of kids over the years.
Casio has a python-enabled calculator on par with the ti-84 for around $50.
I keep hoping 20 years after I was in k12, teachers would be more tech savvy and more willing to adapt to non-mainstream systems, that do just as well!
My understanding is that this is regulatory capture (of a sort). TI calculators are allowed on standardized tests, therefore TI calculators are what gets used, mostly.
Also: I remember teachers back in my day having enough trouble shepherding kids through the use of graphing calculators when there was one standard model to explain. It could be genuinely challenging for them to play tech support for a wider selection.
(Having said all that, if the standard is “you can use anything so long as it runs Python with these libraries” then that opens it up to several calculator models as well as most laptops and tablets that kids might be using.)
The programming language of the HP-48 series, RPL, while not exactly Forth, was quite similar to it because like the calculator itself, it used the stack for both function arguments and output.
Oh; I’m well aware of the reasons. SAT tests mention TI calculators by name, then say in the small print “or any non-qwerty calculator that can be cleared before/after the test”. Teachers want to teach, and not noodle around with the tech du jour, so I know they would just fumble with the 1 kid with the weird calculator. The textbooks are even sometimes printed with the TI calculator keystrokes. I just shipped my kid to college, and handed them the TI-89 I used in HS, they still cost $120 nowadays, same as back then.
That seems like a strange number. I’d have thought that the sweet spot for cheapest large quantity flash ROM would be a bit larger. Someone might want to examine the board to see which chip they used, in case there’s hidden gold. (Buried extra functionality is traditional in calculators, back to when the only difference between a basic four-banger and one with square root and memory were the missing keys on the keyboard.)
With the TI-84 in use for so long, I’m surprised that no one has hacked the hell out of it. (Or have they?)
I love that this is all essentially in response to Numworks, an indie (kickstarted, I think?) project that built and ships calculators that beat TI/HP at their own game, hands down.
Somewhere there has to be a functional fake TI-84 with smart phone guts, and it could cost the same or less than the overpriced real ones. There’s plenty of room in that obsolete beast for a smart phone. The TI-84 form factor isn’t complete protection against cheating.
I’ve gone back to college over the past few years to finally complete a previously aborted degree. I’ve needed graphing calculator functionality for several courses. I tried using a graphing calculator app on my phone, but the complex UI needed for real math input wasn’t very fast to use on a touchscreen for me.
I ended up busting my 20+ year old TI-86 out of storage instead.
Having a physical keyboard with dedicated buttons for mathematical symbols and functions made it considerably faster to use this ancient calculator than a modern app, despite the drastic difference in raw compute speeds.
I would hope a nice hovercraft simulation is part of the included programs?
I don’t like graphing calculators, even HP’s ones, but I own a Swissmicros DM42 (the one in Dave Jones’s video).
Yes, the price is steep, but I find it totally worth it, much more so than what the HP35S, which I also own, costs (~1/3) .
Having used my father’s HP70 as my very first calculator, I now find algebraic entry awkward. I remember being able to do logarithms and (more easily) exponentials using the financial functions.
I think they cannot add a keyboard to the calculator without excluding it from most exams. Graphing calculator market mostly exists thanks to SAT exams anti cheating regulations.
It was a very sad day for me when the display on my 12+ year old HP-48GX died. I used it on an almost daily basis. I never bought another calculator… not sure if that was sentimentality or pragmatism (by then I had a phone for easy math + laptop for real math), maybe both. RIP RPN
