
Are graphical calculators pointless? - pwg
http://www.walkingrandomly.com/?p=3418
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VengefulCynic
The problem here is that the mathematics education industry is bought and paid
for by educational vendors in general and Texas Instruments in particular. My
wife's school has its own TI Vendor who makes sure to come by every month or
two with free goodies for the teachers (and frequently hosts events with free
drinks for the teachers and give-aways, including free calculators.) TI also
has an educator conference that it encourages member schools to pay for
teachers to attend.

In return, the school pays for classroom sets of calculators, training for
teachers and proprietary software and hardware that interfaces directly with
the calculator for use in math and science classes. Given the number of high
school math textbooks with extra sections for use with calculators and
recommendations of a particular brand of calculator, it's hard to imagine that
TI isn't marketing to the textbook companies as well.

With regards to education, the involved parties operate much like Oracle and
the other "complete systems" vendors in the enterprise world: buy influence
with the decision-makers and their subordinates, keep up the hard sell until
the contract is won and then maintain the sell to ensure future business.
That's not to say that the educational vendors give bad customer service, but
at the same time, providing the end-users (the students) with a quality
product at a reasonable price is hardly the primary concern.

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russjhammond
This drives me nuts. I am in grad school and had to go buy a TI-82 because my
stats professor was convinced that a TI-81 was completely different than a
TI-82. I dropped $125 for one course and I now know that I could have used
what I had.

Further more. I had to buy another antiquated calculator for my finance class
that cost me $75.

In the modern world, I should have been able to buy each of these for about $5
as an app on my phone.

Don't get me started on the bookstore and textbooks.

~~~
burgerbrain
Say what you want about the price, but the HP-12c remains one of the most
useful and nicest pieces of hardware I have ever had the pleasure of owning.

That thing will last a lifetime too, they're tanks.

~~~
wtallis
Unfortunately, you do have to replace the batteries every few years, so
they're not _perfect_.

(I've owned a 15c for 3-4 years and have not yet replaced the batteries. My
dad has replaced the batteries in his 12c about 5 times in the past 20 years.)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I've got a Casio scientific calculator that is at least 18 years old and runs
perfectly on it's in built solar panel. Amazing that they haven't done away
with batteries in such calculators given advances in solar power.

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jwuphysics
This has also bothered me for quite awhile. I think what nails the
ridiculousness of graphical calculators is illustrated in this comic:
<http://xkcd.com/768/>

Seriously, though, as a student in CMU, and as a astrophysics major, I can
attest to how unnecessary these calculators are. As long as it can perform
trigonometry and logarithms, it satisfies the need.

I like the author's idea of using "locked-down" netbooks instead. After all, a
netbook installed with Mathematica or MATLAB will be much more similar to
academia/industry level calculators.

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nickbp
I love my TI-89, which I got ~7 years ago for college physics/astro classes,
and still use fairly often when the need arises, typically once or twice a
month. I find the interface of a physical calculator to be far superior to a
more general purpose machine when facing the tasks its built for.

However, I also think they're way overpriced for what they are. I think a lot
of the price is just 'because we can'.

~~~
AdamTReineke
Are there patents that prevent competition? Why do TI's overpriced calculators
have to be the standard?

~~~
wtallis
They've set up a great lock-in system. They've bought off all the schools and
teachers to get them to require students to use a specific TI model, and then
they get the schools to buy textbooks that are written to use the TI
calculators, with examples that give keystroke-by-keystroke instructions, and
sample programs written in that model's dialect of BASIC. Sometimes they even
get the standardized tests to require a specific calculator.

It's a great deal for lazy teachers: not only do they not have to teach their
students how to perform the calculation, they don't even have to teach the
student how to use their calculator to do it. If a student wants to use a
different model, they're on their own. They'll have to learn the TI BASIC
anyways, because the textbook doesn't even try to do a decent job of
describing an algorithm in any other notation.

In most cases, breaking TI's monopoly would be as difficult as, and possibly
require, busting a teachers' union.

~~~
sliverstorm
I've heard the other reason is their math libraries. I don't know a whole lot
about the calculator industry, but I've been told the number of companies with
good embedded math libraries is very small, and the cost of developing one is
prohibitive.

This adds big barriers to entry. You can't write your own libraries, and you
can't use more powerful hardware to compensate either- TI's calculators cost
them very little (the popular TI-83 uses a CPU designed in 1976), and will
shove you right out of the market with their huge profit margin.

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wtallis
Graphing calculators aren't pointless, but most people using them are missing
the point. (And TI likes it that way.)

Why not just put Mathematica on a netbook? Aside from the fact that a netbook
is 3-5 times larger and thus less portable, it's all about the user interface.
What's the smallest laptop you can get that has a real number pad, with its
own enter, +, -, x, and / keys? It's probably bigger than any netbook. A
graphing calculator should have a keyboard that is designed not around
general-purpose text entry, but around entering math. Even the graphing
calculators that have QWERTY keyboards also a dedicated number pad and a bunch
of other keys.

Even though I have a full-size 109-key keyboard and a pair of monitors
totaling over 4 megapixels, and I have MATLAB, Mathematica, and a bunch of
other math programs installed, I still keep my HP-50g on my desk right under
my monitor. It turns on instantly, has a pretty good keyboard layout, and even
though the screen resolution is monochrome 131x80, it makes good use of the
whole screen to display just what I'm working on. MATLAB _et al_ are basically
worthless for short computations even if you do keep them running at all
times, and while they are both faster for large computations and have more
features, they aren't as interactive and simpler functions are take too many
keystrokes to get to when compared with my calculator. (I will occasionally
actually use a 50g emulator on my desktop for some of the tasks that are a bit
cumbersome without a full QWERTY keyboard, but still suck with native
software.)

\------

Of course, the above is only why we _should_ be continuing to use and develop
graphing calculators. It has nothing to do with the current markets. (Astute
readers will have guessed this based on my use of an HP calculator as an
example.)

The current reality in the calculator market is that calculators are designed
for and marketed to teachers who train their students to be machines that
operate calculators. TI and Casio are competing to see who can better enable
bad teaching methods. They do this by offering standardized platforms, fully
locked-down to assuage teachers' fears about kinds of cheating that shouldn't
even help on a properly designed math test, and they partner with textbook
authors and publishers to integrate their model's functionality in to the
"curriculum".

Nobody is designing or marketing calculators to engineers anymore, and
engineers are for the most part not using handheld calculators as much as they
used to. I don't think it's clear which is the cause and which is the effect.
What is clear is that you can't judge the entire concept of a handheld
graphing calculator based solely on the models that weren't meant to be
useful. Almost anything a good calculator can do, it will do better than a
general-purpose machine.

~~~
jerf
"What's the smallest laptop you can get that has a real number pad, with its
own enter, +, -, x, and / keys?"

An arbitrarily-small laptop of your choice, up to and including cell phones,
plus one of these: [http://www.amazon.com/Targus-PAUK10U-Ultra-Mini-
Keypad/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Targus-PAUK10U-Ultra-Mini-
Keypad/dp/B00008NG7N/ref=pd_cp_e_1)

Not good enough? Tack a few more keys on and sell it for $30 instead. But I
would be quite sure the average student would be happy to use the keypad and
on-screen buttons for sin, cos, tan, e^x, and the two or three other things
they actually use in school. For that matter most kids are going to be fine
with the cell phone as-is, which, I might remind you, also frequently has
dedicated numeric keys and enough other repurposeable keys to get you quite a
ways.

(Still not enough keys? Try turning on num lock on your netbook's keyboard.
Most still have them. Then bind the other keys to useful functions. It may not
be optimal but with only a bit of practice it probably won't be a stopper. The
keyboard is your slave, not your master.)

Yes, this won't permit very fast entry, but you and I (mmm, sweet sweet RPN)
are not the norm. Go look at your average TI-82 user; IIRC, they are hunting
and pecking those keyboards anyhow.

To be honest I swing the other way myself; eliminate them entirely. But at
least 15 years ago when I bought my HP-48G for very similar amounts of money I
was actually getting something. If we are going to be turning out these
calculators, they ought to be $30, not $130.

~~~
wtallis
Why buy a netbook _and_ an add-on keypad if the user interface is _still_
going to be the bottleneck? The CPUs in current generation calculators are
fast enough for basically any undergraduate use case. (With better software,
the HP's 75Mhz CPU would be able to keep up with any computation task that
makes sense for a device with a small screen.)

Yes, they ought to be a lot cheaper, but I think your target of $30 isn't
quite realistic. Good keyboards aren't cheap, and neither are chips with power
consumption low enough for running off AAAs. Certainly, if you want a high-
contrast high-resolution screen and a lot of RAM, you'll be looking at a lot
more than $30.

~~~
jerf
"Good keyboards aren't cheap... high-contrast high-resolution screen... lot of
RAM..."

You want those things. I do not disrespect that. It sounds like you are a
serious user. But you're asking students who will effectively throw these
things away when they are done taking their remedial college math courses to
spend $100 for those things. Why should they do that?

Also, we are talking TI, not HP; as I recall those keyboards sucked 15 years
ago and I doubt they got better. Even then, the TIs felt like toys where my HP
felt like a real tool.

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onedognight
While the author has a point that calculators are essentially pointless (if
not downright scammy) these day, I know more than a few people learned to
program on their HP calculators. It was my first experience learning the ins
and outs of an entire API, eventually deciding it wasn't sufficient and then
digging deeper into the previously hidden world of the firmware below and
eventually to the CPU itself. Of course you can do that on any device, but it
was helpful be able to play around in class without suspicion.

~~~
boredguy8
I learned assembly on my TI calculator while I was bored in math class. But
that doesn't seem like a reason to keep the calculators: whatever ends up in
its place can also be where people 'learn to program', and it might even be
better to learn in another environment.

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forkandwait
Maybe not pointless, but I am thankful I took my math classes when we still
had to memorize the shape of the important functions and what happened when
you did a + f(x-b) to f(x).

Well, I guess I think they are pointless, but I would be that teacher that
doesn't let anyone use calculators at all, at least until 9th grade. Graphs
are very useful in analyzing data, but then you want a real software package.
But for learning math, honestly I think you get more by exercising doing lots
of problems, memorizing the key facts (yes, memorizing), and drawing your own
damn graphs (get off my lawn you kids!).

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andrewaylett
If you're using an Android phone, you can get a really nice graphical
calculator app. Now called "Andy-83", you can probably guess which major
semiconductor company asked its developer to change its name a few weeks
ago...

<http://www.supware.net/android/andy-83/>

No interest to declare: just a happy user :). I don't need to use a calculator
very often -- when I do I am much more likely to have my phone on me than to
be anywhere near a 'real' calculator.

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jff
I got a TI-86 my freshman year of highschool, taught myself the BASIC dialect,
etc. Useful machine with a nice menu system (menus sit at the bottom of the
screen, rather than modally filling the screen like a TI-82/83/84).

I fell in love with RPN at my first internship, where I noticed a lot of the
(mechanical) engineers used HP-12 calculators for most everything. I later
bought an HP-48 and, eventually, an HP-50G. To my mind, the HP graphing
calculators are the Unix of the calculator world, while TI calcs are more like
Windows. Most people use TI, but the HP calculators have a longer lineage, a
great if somewhat noob-unfriendly interface, and more powerful hardware (75
MHz ARM processor, 2 MB of storage/512 KB of RAM, SD card slot, and the
higher-quality HP keyboard).

I haven't used my calculator in a while, but I think that's largely because
I'm working with operating systems at the moment and don't need to do more
than integer arithmetic. I occasionally reach for my Android phone with the
HP-48 app on it, but without being able to feel the keys under my fingers it
is sadly lacking.

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teuobk
I'm fond of my TI-89, but I keep it around for nostalgia more than anything
else. (Serial number 750, manufactured July 1998, purchased new. Ah,
memories.) When it breaks, I won't be replacing it.

When I do use it, it tends to be for simple arithmetic.

~~~
theatrus2
I still have mine. Great little calculator, and the CAS is actually quite
competent.

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gamble
I carry a $20 Casio that's light and small enough to go unnoticed in my bag,
while providing better tactile response than a smartphone calculator. For
anything more substantial I break out MATLAB.

The problem with graphing calculators is that they're autistic. With MATLAB
it's trivial to load a data file, run some calculations, generate plots, and
export to PDF for use in a document. Graphing calculators are fine for working
through problem sets in high school, but outside school they fall in an
awkward gap between being too big and heavy to carry around and too limited
for real work.

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robryan
In the classroom setting there are a few more reasons why they are appealing,
relative to a computer they are less distracting (although there are still
games for them) and they can be used in tests without to much fear of them
being misused for teaching. They also allow a teacher to learn one tool and be
able to help students rather than having to deal with varying hardware
configurations and maths programs.

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iofthestorm
I hope the author realizes that TI does a _ton_ more than make graphing
calculators... they're probably one of the biggest manufacturers of ICs out
there (about to swallow National Semiconductor or something).

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drivebyacct2
Rote memorization and learning processes is what's important in today's
education system. Not learning, inference and discovery of new knowledge.

~~~
compuguy
I'm going to stop you there. Not everyone can learn though wrote memorization.
People learn in different ways. Second, do you remember every proof and
formula (excluding ones used reguarly)? We are taught to understand and apply
these things, not to spend 90 percent of our time learning them for one or two
classes.

~~~
wtallis
"Not everyone can learn though rote memorization. People learn in different
ways."

That doesn't mean that current mathematics teaching methods take that in to
account. Try looking in a current middle-school or high-school math textbook.
I think you'll be surprised, and disappointed.

When I was learning high-school level math, I found that the quality and
usefulness of a math textbook was inversely proportional to the probability of
the public schools using it (and, perhaps not too coincidentally, the
colorfulness of the textbook).

In recent years, my local schools tried to get away from a rote curriculum by
replacing it with a curriculum that basically eschewed teaching, instead
relying on "guided discovery" or something like that. It didn't help the
standardized test scores _or_ the students' mastery of what they were supposed
to learn.

~~~
compuguy
Actually I wasn't thinking in that extreme of fashion. It helps to allow the
user of formula sheets. That would be a good first step in the right
direction.

