
Reign of the $100 graphing calculator is ending - lnguyen
https://qz.com/977987/thanks-to-the-startup-desmos-the-reign-of-the-texas-instruments-100-graphing-calculator-in-schools-is-finally-ending/
======
coding123
Do you all hear that? What is it? It's the fond-memory train coming to this
thread.

A friend and I were programming a text-and-map based RPG on the Ti-85. It was
really awesome, you could walk around on the map from town to town and enemies
would find you kinda like Final Fantasy, then you fight them. Anyway we were
pretty far into the game. I started programming a "Quadra Pong" game at the
same time. This Quadra Pong was networked with two Ti-85s so each player would
be on their own calc, connected using the connection cable (sold separately).
Anyway, got pretty far in the game, but had to borrow my friends calc to test
it. Something you should know about the connection cable and bugginess, is it
sometimes caused both connected calculators to crash and reset. And I mean
FULL reset with no memory.

We lost both Quadra Pong and our RPG in one tiny scary second... still crying
over that one.

~~~
rubatuga
So many memories of using the AXE parser for the TI. It's a gaming engine that
compiles code to assembly, and it's probably at least 10-20 times faster than
TI BASIC. Anyway, I've made a two calculator pong using that engine, and the
network commands are quite simple with AXE! I managed to combine the server
and client into one program that auto configured on startup. Making games with
my friend was what really pushed me into computer science. Here's a link for
the parser if you're interested.

[http://clrhome.org/tutorials/axe/](http://clrhome.org/tutorials/axe/)

[http://axe.eeems.ca/Commands.html](http://axe.eeems.ca/Commands.html)

------
peatmoss
Related story (the author describing the TI monopoly jogged my memory): I am
part of the generation that was required to buy a big blue or black graphing
calculator. As a high schooler I was indignant that we were being told to buy
from just one company. So, based on reviews posted in a variety of online
forums, I bought an HP-48 instead of the specified TI.

After telling all my friends that my new calculator was going to be _amazing_
, I got it home, pulled it out of the box, turned it on, tried to add two
numbers, and failed. After the sinking feeling passed, I started in to
figuring out what I had determined the root-problem was: Reverse Polish
Notation. A couple years of math and physics classes were then spent trying
desperately to not let on to my peers or teachers that I had no idea how to do
the thing that was being taught. I'd frequently spent time scouring the
Internet and HP-48 menus to replicate what I'd seen in class.

But man did I love that calculator. The RPN stopped being a liability, and
became an asset. And, the equation library saved my bacon on occasion.

~~~
fivestar
Yes, I used and still have the HP48SX. It got me through college as a math
major and then graduate school as well. And the fact that people can't
understand RPN doesn't speak well to the caliber of the students in higher
education.

~~~
peatmoss
It's an interesting mental litmus test. Opposition to RPN is rarely about
inability or carefully considered dislike. It's mostly about rejection of
difference.

Same deal with lisp syntax. Beginners take to Racket's parens easily, but
(some) veteran programmers are dispositionally unwilling to even attempt to
see the rationale beyond the learned aesthetics, even when there's so much to
gain.

------
jordigh
So, why aren't they just phone apps these days?

I mean, I understand why education wants these calculators, to control the
students during tests. But after you leave school, why haven't calculator
phone apps taken their place? Or is it because that once you leave school and
you really need to do calculations, you turn to R, Matlab, or Python instead?

Also, I'm surprised nobody has quoted xkcd yet:

[https://xkcd.com/768/](https://xkcd.com/768/)

Edit: I know phone apps exist. I am just wondering why they don't seem to be
more popular. Or are they gaining popularity I'm not seeing?

~~~
tzs
If I need graphing, I'll go to my computer and use Mathematica or gnuplot.

Where a handheld calculator comes in handy is when doing something on paper
that needs some arithmetic or trig/exp/log/roots. For that I find a physical
calculator nicer than a phone calculator.

First, with the physical calculator it is easier to operate it without looking
because of the physical buttons. Second, the physical calculator doesn't go to
sleep as often and wakes up faster (and doesn't require authentication).

An example of a calculator that is almost perfect in my opinion is the HP-15C
[1]. Note the dimensions: 128 × 79 × 15 mm (5" x 3.1" x 0.6"). This makes it
small enough to work with even if you are working off on a sheet of letter-
sized or A4 paper on a clipboard, or out of a spiral-bound notebook, and it
easily fits in a shirt pocket.

In 2012 HP brought this back into production in a limited edition that sold
for about $140. I grabbed one so that I would have two, since my original from
1982 can't last forever.

It should be possible to make a "calculator case" or "calculator overlay" for
a phone that would put physical buttons for a calculator over the touch
screen. There are materials that "conduct" touch. It should be possible to
incorporate that into the button design so that when not pressed the touch
conductive material not touching the screen, and when pressed fully it touches
both the screen and the finger that is pressing the button.

Maybe even get fancy, and incorporate a small eInk display on each button to
display the labels for the keys, and include an app that can change the labels
to match the needs of whatever app you are using the buttons with.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-15C](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-15C)

------
samfisher83
I think one of the reasons why many teachers prefer the old ti83 it is because
it isn't online. They don't want people cheating. Some classes you could only
have a basic scientific calculator. In a lot of my college classes they just
didn't let you use a graphing calculator since you could put a notes in there.
Some classes just banned calculators.

I just have a hard time believe schools and teachers will allow interned
connected devices on tests.

------
VLM
I find it interesting that all students had to pay $80 out of pocket for our
TI-81 but the same school district a generation later hands out $800 ipads to
entire classes like they're candy.

I used the same TI-81 from 7th thru 12th grade which was 6 years, but the
refresh for ipads at the same district is a mere 4 years.

I can't help but notice the TI-81 was essentially kid proof and indestructible
but the ipad is (intentionally) very delicate to drive sales.

Finally I think I used my TI-81 in math and science classes more hours per
year than my son uses his ipad. Mostly we used the 81 to do math, mostly my
son's school issued ipad is for "downtime" gaming (minecraft) and youtube
watching with some casual internet surfing.

The tone of the article implies the $100 graphing calculator was a bad era,
but its worth considering things have gotten much worse, not improved at all.

------
jerf
Going digital would have some other advantages too. It would be easy to make a
staged calculator where buttons only appear as you learn how to use them, for
instance, so you don't stick a calculator in an Algebra II student's face that
has stuff for calculus on it, which only contributes to the mystique of "math
being hard".

For a specialist who uses physical calculators all the time for serious
computations, the advantages of a dedicated physical keyboard for your math
probably can't be beat.

But... uhh.... who exactly does that describe nowadays? I'm sure it's non-
zero; I'm also sure we're into "niche within a niche" territory here.

~~~
adrianN
It might just be me, but I read up on the buttons that I didn't understand
yet. Some of them were really useful shortcuts that I wasn't supposed to know
about.

~~~
Jtsummers
Indeed. Learning something earlier than planned is a feature, not a bug.

~~~
maxerickson
The way to do it would be to have an interactive assessment system that
activated features.

Prompts for exploratory learning could be presented in places other than the
calculator keyboard.

------
nickcw
When I was at school in the UK the Casio calculator reigned supreme.

Luckily there is this rather nice Android App called RealCalc which emulates
the kind of caclulator I used to use at school quite well!

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.nickfine...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.nickfines.RealCalc&hl=en_GB)

I spent 100s of hours using that calculator so having a exact replica on my
phone is very helpful.

My kids use yet another different Casio calculator which continually
frustrates me with its desire to represent everything as a fraction!

~~~
Retr0spectrum
On the newer Casio scientific calculators, there's a button you can press to
switch between fractional and decimal output. IIRC the button looks like S>D.

------
dade_
Looks like a marketing campaign to me. It would make much more sense to
replace the calculator with an app that works offline. As a student, I
wouldn't trust I have Internet. As a school, I wouldn't trust students aren't
cheating.

------
loki22
How is replacing a offline device with a connected app better?

The school boards should simply certify multiple devices for use in the exams.

Hardware is primitive and some enterprising company can devise a much nicer
interface and probably at 1/4th price.

~~~
mcphage
> Hardware is primitive and some enterprising company can devise a much nicer
> interface and probably at 1/4th price.

But nobody bothers, because they all know that HP can offer it at 1/4 the
price, too—and less. Nobody touches HP's margins, because HP can survive on
much smaller margins than any startup ever could. Why start a price war you
could only lose?

------
CyberDildonics
The real travesty here is that calculators cost $100 USD. They have a Z80,
some buttons wired up, and a very low res LCD screen. Students should be
BUILDING these in their engineering classes. They must cost only a few dollars
to make, it's disgusting that they cost so much because of forced lock in and
requirements.

Maybe one of the first applications of RISC-V should be a fully open source
graphing calculator. Then anyone could build one to the same spec and they
would be cheap + help open source hardware.

~~~
pflats
Hey now, the newest TI 84s use the eZ80!

------
upofadown
I am not sure exactly what is being implied here. Schools are still insisting
that students have to use a TI-84 but that an app of some kind that emulates a
TI-84 is OK?

Not sure how that makes sense if true. Do schools actually teach classes on
how to use a calculator? Is this just another way that schools are not dealing
with the fact that computers exist?

~~~
tbihl
Based on my experiences, it's less likely "calculator class" and more likely
"integrals are done by pressing shift+ln(), then right arrow to enter the
limits, then comma followed by the variable" (this is an example not following
any real calculator) during calculus. So rather than teaching the topic fully
and then letting students figure out how to aid themselves with calculators or
computers, they teach how to do the technique on the dominant calculator. So
if you're not inclined to read manuals or troubleshoot or think about what
you're doing, having a Casio instead of a TI would be big trouble.

------
niftich
Contrary to what the article offhandedly suggests ("there are some drawbacks
to using an online calculator on tests -- it's trickier to spot cheating, for
example"), I'd wager an online-only service can be locked down in ways that
the TIs couldn't be, and with considerably less manual effort.

A common practice before standardized exams was resetting the RAM and the
Archive, and deleting Apps; some school districts even use special Apps
written for the calculator to enforce that it doesn't contain unauthorized
code.

Meanwhile, server-side code running somewhere else produces a clean
environment for every user.

~~~
bpicolo
`I'd wager an online-only service can be locked down in ways that the TIs
couldn't be, and with considerably less manual effort.`

But they have to either provide fully-locked-down computers or somehow lock
student computers down otherwise. That sounds hard or expensive, too.

If schools adopt chromebooks like mad, could work?

------
nsxwolf
Part of me loves that there's still a pricey 48K Z80 machine out there.

------
walshemj
yes I can see exam boards allowing students to have access to an internet
based app NOT!

~~~
Jtsummers
If the exam is done on a computer (what they mean by "going digital"), they
can have a local copy of the web app (on the computer or their locked down
network).

------
pflats
No, it's not.

I love Desmos. It's a great tool for the classroom. I use it whenever I can.

It's also not a replacement for a handheld calculator. If the internet goes
out, you lose your calculator. If it is working, then you're policing students
to make sure that they're using their device for calculation. If it is working
and you have the best students in the world or a locked-down network, it's
still slower, less precise, and more annoying to use a calculator with virtual
buttons than a handheld calculator with physical buttons.

Because of the nature of classroom instruction, there was almost always going
to be at least local monopolies on calculators. If you're reading HN, you
probably didn't struggle to figure out a graphing calculator. Many students
do. Part of a lesson is often teaching students how to use a calculator, and
it is far easier to only give a single set of instructions. Regardless of how
well you have the other students working independently and how well the
teacher knows all three+ calculator brands, the most valuable resource in a
class is teacher time and attention. If a teacher spends 15 minutes explaining
how to use a calculator instead of 5, that's 10 minutes of class time that
students don't have access to the teacher to learn math. That adds up quickly.

As a result, most schools decide, independently of any marketing, to
standardize on a single calculator. As the article notes, TI got to where it
is because it spent a lot of money supporting teachers for free. Momentum took
it from there.

On top of all that, the other thing a lot of people overlook re: the TI-84
family (and other handheld calculators) is how fast it is. Not the processor,
but the speed at which it gets you an answer. It powers on and is instantly
ready to go. You don't get that with any computer solution. Shared devices
have to be logged into. Browsers have to open. Web apps have to load.

TI also has a new classroom calculator with an ARM processor and a bunch of
other features, the NSpire. It's sold at about the same price points as an 84.
Most teachers I talked to found it infuriating: you hit the power button, and
you have to wait a few seconds for it to boot. Then when it does, it loads a
menu screen where you can choose if you want to do calculations or something
else. The old hardware just worked: you hit on, and before you can touch
another key, it's ready to go.

------
zafka
I understand this intellectually, but it still makes me sad. I had to reach
down into my bag, to check the number on mine: TI-85. I actually use mine
occasionally. When my original one died, I picked up a used on amazon. I think
I know how my old science teacher who kept a slice rule in his shirt pocket
felt........

------
douche
I think the only thing I learned in four years of high school math was how to
screw around and graph functions on a TI-83. Aside from how to use the
calculator, we didn't cover anything that wasn't in the Saxon Algebra 1 book
between 8th grade and 12th grade AP Calculus. What a waste of so many hours...

------
Edmond
can't happen fast enough, though that is small potatoes compared to the
textbook racket.

------
logfromblammo
Schools are still stuck in the past in regard to "cheating".

I recall reading a rant on the Internet--I forgot where--about how the _real_
cheat is when a teacher gives the same exam to every student, year after year.

In the future, everyone will be connected to the Internet constantly,
including students. We are close to that now. I can look up any obscure bit of
information in only a few moments. Expecting students of the future to take a
test without that digital link to everyone and everything is like teaching
someone to juggle, and then making them tie one hand to the opposite foot for
the test.

It's ridiculous--almost like asking algorithmic questions for the whiteboard
interview. No, I didn't memorize forever the big-O for eight different sorting
algorithms, because I have been using Internet search engines since AltaVista,
and card catalogs and textbook indexes before that. The era when someone had
to become his own information library, with comprehensive index, to be good at
his job has been over for a long, long time.

So I think the burden is on teachers and testers to devise new methods of
testing that make instant information lookup and collaboration entirely
irrelevant to the methods of student evaluation. Make "cheating" an optional
feature rather than a bug. I think in the short term that means that tests
will have to be time-limited and questions will have to be procedurally
generated, and unique to each test-taker. And further, the questions will have
to be structured such that they can't be solved by just copy-pasting them into
a search box.

I recall how I programmed my TI-85 to show "Mem cleared Defaults set" before
my exams. It wasn't because I wanted to cheat, but because I didn't want to
lose the other programs I wrote just because some teacher didn't trust me.
Obviously, someone else could have easily done the same to protect a crib
sheet or answer key. When your school system mandates that every student have
the same calculators, that type of cheat only becomes more common. The
teachers that wrote their exams as "open textbook" never needed to worry about
crib sheets. They wouldn't care if you memorized the image of the required
pages, or just the page numbers, or just the index key, so long as you could
get the correct answers before the end of class.

The tests I took in school are obsolete. No school should be trying to extend
their lifespan by creating administrative calculator monopolies and
arbitrarily blocking newer technologies. Welcome yourself to the 21st century
and write better tests.

~~~
Jtsummers
I partly agree with you, a lot of tests (probably the majority) are bad tests.
Many test on memorization rather than comprehension. But tests with a focus on
comprehension are valuable evaluation tools, and access to the internet would
break that without going to particularly contrived problem sets.

The purpose of an education is to understand the topics (language, math,
science, art), not the tools (as in specific mechanical or informational
aids). Making them (too) available during evaluations like exams and tests
would only show that students were able to put something into Mathematica and
get a result, not that they understood what they were doing.

------
kwhitefoot
I'm heartily glad that I went to school before calculators were available. As
far as I can see they are just a distraction. How is a calculator useful for
learning calculus?

------
im_down_w_otp
I'm going to be buried with my HP48G. There will be no prying it from any
cold, dead, or otherwise described hands.

------
SomeStupidPoint
It's hard to justify a $100 calculator in the age of $100 2-in-1s.

