Heh. I graduated in '94 and I still have my original TI-81, “Big Red”. (It’s blue–they were all blue at the time–but I was in high school and thought that, thanks to my color-blindness, that was funny.) The battery compartment still holds a cute note from a gorgeous girl thanking me for some help I gave her in one of our classes.
At any rate, even back in '92, when I got the calculator, we had textbooks with specific instructions for the TI-81; it was a required calculator for Calculus I and II, and I believe, Trig.
Many higher level math classes are less about fast manual calculations and more about data and equation manipulation that can really only be done if you have a fancy calculator.
In my college stats class for example, we learned how to do many statistical tests by hand but they can take many hours even for a small data set and no one does them that way in real life. You can’t really teach any amount of sophisticated math unless calculators are taking care of the grunt work while the students focus on concepts.
Sorry - I forgot to mention at the beginning that I’m in Canada (Alberta).
And sure, you definitely need to understand the basic concepts first. Give me a pencil and a piece of paper and I can multiply a four digit number by a six digit one. Or figure out the area of a circle. Or do basic trigonometry (it’s been a while).
But if you need a high level of precision (is pi 3.14, or 3.14159 - how many significant digits do you need, through how many steps of problem solving?), then with a calculator you can complete far more problems in a test.
Sure, they could write a test with three or four problems, covering one major concept each. But in my school system (YMMV), they seem to prefer giving a test with many questions (50 or 100 multiple choice questions was not uncommon for a long exam). You just wouldn’t be able to finish it in two hours if you didn’t have at least a basic calculator.
I was also required to have the TI-81 back in high school (I graduated in '93). I can remember having some silly “Helicopter” game on it that I used to get me through boring classes in my first year of college.
I can only imagine what type of applications must be possible on the current breed of graphing calculators.
I have a TI-85 calculator. I have never seen another one besides mine. It is pretty old, but works great. Anybody ever use/seen/heard of one of those before? Whats the difference?
I graduated in 2004. Graphing calculators were not allowed on the exams (maybe for the particular unit that the calculators were used for, but not the final). I was in my 2nd semester of Grade 11 before I even held a graphing calculator - the teacher was shocked. I was the only one in the class who had never used one. Every time graphing came up, my teachers preferred to teach it by hand up to that point to make sure we never had a dependency on graphing calcs. I caught on fast though.
[QUOTE=acsenray] Waenara, could you specify what school system you’re talking about. Almost none of the nomenclature you’re using is familiar to me. And I’ve never encountered a system in the United States that has separate streams for those planning to study scientific subjects in college and those who aren’t.
[quote]
I don’t know if I would exactly call it separate streams for those planning to study science in college, but both the high school I graduated from and the one my son now attends have a number of different levels of math classes- four in my son’s school. One track will lead to Calculus as a senior, another leads to pre-calc. a third to advanced algebra and trig, and the last ends ends at intermediate algebra. It wouldn’t be a great idea to take the track ending in avanced algebra and trig if you were planning to study a science in college.
Good God, some a you folks really make me feel old. Here’s the calculator I used in High School - definitely not required with that price tag (I actually found mine laying on a sidewalk one morning while delivering newspapers) - the Texas Instruments SR-51A.
And this little gem, the Sharp EL-5100, I bought in college. And I’m still using it.
Nice try. When I was in school, only a few snootie rich kids could afford those. Most people got by with pencil-and-paper. I was an oddity for using a circular slide rule, especially in physics class. To my considerable glee at the time, I generally could run the calculation faster than the SRKs. In college, I used to run significance tests on a calculator in the library where I had to use repetetive multiplicaiton to extract square roots to the required number of significant digits. (What can I say? Couldn’t afford a calculator. Way expensive in those days.)
As for the whether the paradigm shift is good or bad? My problem is that, once you introduce calculators, you generally undermine what is probably the most important skill in calculation: the ability to estimate the answer. IMHO, this is a crucial, even indispensible cross-check, which I find somewhat lacking with “kids these days.” (Yeah, it was twenty miles to school, in the snow, uphill both ways.) Or stated a little differently. Since we’re teaching math with calculators, we should be teaching the estimating skills alongside. My $0.02’s worth.
I have to agree here. When I was young my (engineer) dad taught me to use a slide rule. Calculators were introduced just about the time I started to get skillful with the slide rule. However, one carryover from that skill was estimating. Many of my classmates in college would turn in homework or test answers that were absurd. I could estimate in my head in parallel with running the calculation on my calculator and would know instantly if I mis-keyed any of the numbers.
Amen. However, I feel this is more of a proficiency issue - the folks that think 10e17 is a good answer for the cost per pound or number of bacteria in 20 minutes or whatever don’t know anything about the subject matter, not so much the computation. I’ve worked side by side with engineers that can estimate and those that can’t, old and young. By and large the estimators are the smarter ones.
But while we’re on the subject - my dad teaches, and he has shared some amazing stories of “teh stupid”. Ask the kids to evaluate 13/1?. First they fumble for a calculator. Then they ask which number goes in first. And lastly, they think the calculator is broken because they get the same number back! :rolleyes:
You can also upload a pretty decent version of five-card draw poker to the TI-83. And graphing the right function or three gives you a picture of boobies on your screen.
No, I didn’t do particularly well in AP Calculus, why do you ask?
When I was teaching (pre-1998), the choices in graphing calculators were: TI, HP, and Casio. Casio was always cheaper, but almost nobody could figure out how to make it do stuff. The HPs could do more than the TIs, hence were always the geeks’ favorite calculator. But in terms of user-friendliness, the HP, while better than the Casio, still fell way short of the TI.
So that’s how the market sorted out: some people would buy Casios because of the price, but almost inevitably felt like they’d thrown their money away. And most other people wanted the user-friendliness of the TI over whatever advantages the HP had to offer. Accordingly, TI had more the appearance of competition than the real thing. So unless that’s changed, TI’s in a position to keep on charging $95 for an 83+.
Plus TI is very helpful to faculty that use their calculators. In return for more or less requiring my students to have the 83, they gave me the gizmo for free that showed my calculator display on the overhead projector. They sold me calculator/PC interfaces for cheap, allowing students to print out what they’d graphed on the calculator and hand it in. And I knew I’d have to spend maybe one class period introducing my students to the TI, which was time I’d have no trouble making up later in the course.
I’m surprised that there isn’t TI emulator software for computers for the different calculators. Or maybe there is. That might put TI in check and force them to lower their prices. If they can emulate the software for a PDA, no doubt they would have to lower their prices.
Hell, you think the price of the TI-83C has been high for a long time, consider the HP-12C financial calculator.
It is still being sold, though it was introduced in 1981! The original price was about $150, and it is currently being sold by Staples at $85.99.
I had one in college in the late 1980s, but its screen broke. I thought I’d wait a little while for the price to drop to get another one, but it hasn’t.
I can’t believe that there is any other piece of electronic equipment still being sold 25 years after its introduction at more than half of its original price.
Yes, but calculators are designed like calculators because thats the best design for calculating. I have a Palm with a fancy calculator on it that can do graphing, RPN and all sorts of fancy stuff… I still reach for my cheapie $5 calculator whenever I can because it’s just so much faster to use. Buttons work better than touch screens, the result is easier to read and you can hold it better in your hands.
PDA calculators are great in a pinch or when you want to do relatively specialised calculations, but day in day out, nothing is going to replace a calculator specifically designed for calculating.
In college, I used to run significance tests on a calculator in the library where I had to use repetetive multiplicaiton to extract square roots to the required number of significant digits. (What can I say? Couldn’t afford a calculator. Way expensive in those days.)