
Big Calculator: How Texas Instruments Monopolized Math Class - lewisflude
https://gen.medium.com/big-calculator-how-texas-instruments-monopolized-math-class-67ee165045dc
======
julienb_sea
I love how the answer given to this problem is more funding. Such an
indication of what's wrong with modern education. This entire article is
exposing the TI monopoly on calculators, getting 85-90% profit margins, and
our solution is to strike to get taxpayer money to keep paying for the things?
We should encourage competition.

Consider - an app that replicates this functionality on the phone, but tracks
if the user at any point closes the app. This then is reported to the teacher
so the teacher knows if there was any cheating.

~~~
m463
forget the app or phone

how about: a standardized test calculator specification, with careful
boundaries around what is required, what is permitted and what is not.

Then let competition drive prices and features.

~~~
CydeWeys
This doesn't really work in the classroom, because right now teachers rely on
being able to teach exactly how to perform a given calculation. Have lots of
different calculators with differing interfaces, some of which the teacher
doesn't even know, and teaching becomes much more difficult.

~~~
Quiark
Honestly that sounds like a bug to be fixed. You don't teach to drive exactly
one type of car.

~~~
smelendez
I mean, you sort of do! Every modern US car has a wheel to steer, a brake
pedal on the left, a gas pedal on the right. Calculator UIs vary way more than
that. In the US, you can drive a manual after training on automatic, but
that's not true everywhere.

And in-car driving instruction happens with the teacher next to the student in
a car they're familiar with. It's not like they're radioing to 30 students
each in a separate car.

Also, the calculator is a tool to teach math. If someone gets distracted
figuring out the calculator, they're behind. The student driver car is to
teach driving.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Sounds like the UI needs a spec as well then.

------
WhompingWindows
Tangential story: When I was in middle school, we had a computers class where
we had a mock stock-buying competition. Each team of 4 students was given a
pretend 10,000 dollars to invest in the market, and then we could buy/sell
throughout the semester and whoever was left with the most equity would win.

We 7th graders didn't know which company to buy and our teacher told us we had
1 minute left to choose a stock. We looked around the room and I saw the
calculator in front of us. "Oh great, let's go with Texas Instruments, TI,
everyone has one of their calculators!"...So, we bought $10,000 of "TI", which
turned out to be "Telecom Italia", an Italian phone company...

...which actually did REALLY well, we were nationally ranked in the game after
a couple of weeks, but TI ended up tanking for whatever reason and we lost in
the end.

~~~
btrettel
My elementary school had a similar thing in (I believe) a math class I was in.
I recall that we were given newspapers with a list of stock prices and were in
groups. I can't recall if we were given any lesson on how the stock market
worked. We had fairly little time to pick stocks. I'm not sure that I learned
anything other than to actually know what you're doing if you're going to
invest in random stocks.

~~~
vkou
The people whose lucky guesses paid off probably learned a different lesson.

------
dwohnitmok
As far as I can tell the TI graphing calculators are riding entirely off of
mind share/familiarity, both among students and teachers, and teaching
materials, which reinforces the former. Specifically textbooks and teacher
training all use TI graphing calculators. Presumably tests are therefore made
with the capabilities of a TI graphing calculator in mind.

CollegeBoard actually has a wide range of calculators it allows for the SAT
([https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/taking-the-
tes...](https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/taking-the-
test/calculator-policy)), but very few test takers take advantage of this.

TI graphing calculators are based on sufficiently old hardware that it is
probably faster to emulate a TI calculator on something with the power of a
Raspberry Pi. Indeed an open source third party emulator already exists
([https://github.com/CE-Programming/CEmu](https://github.com/CE-
Programming/CEmu)). Does anyone know what the legality of selling a calculator
that is a dedicated emulator of a TI graphing calculator (not just an online
one like Desmos, but a purpose-made physical calculator that does nothing
else)? I'm curious why this hasn't already been done before.

EDIT: I mean a dedicated emulator that can do nothing else but be a graphing
calculator, e.g. not something on a smartphone.

~~~
dboreham
I have two high school age sons. They attend the same school. I bought
graphing calculators for both. One told me Casio was ok. The other said the
school requires TI. Go figure..

Software emulations on smart phone are not permitted due to school rules about
mobile device use in class. Also they aren't allowed for tests due to the
potential for cheating. Of course you can cheat by storing extra info in a
graphing calculator but they don't seem to have thought of that..

~~~
oefrha
Back when (and where) I grew up calculators were hardly ever used in math
classes and completely forbidden in exams. I later went the IMO route and
obtained a degree in mathematics; neither required a calculator.

I still fail to understand why the hell graphing calculators are required for
some high school math curriculum.

~~~
gtk40
Statistics is taking a larger and larger part in many math curricula and is
quite aided by the use of a graphing calculator. The AP Stats coursework and
exam also assumes you will have one.

~~~
oefrha
To learn and demonstrate understanding of statistical concepts, no calculator
is required. In fact calculating and graphing by hand are great for learning.
To bridge the gap to the real world, a computer, however crappy, with Excel
installed, however outdated, is infinitely better. (Not that I endorse Excel,
it’s just the most common tool among the general public.)

I happen to be a physicist too and while I’m not an experimentalist, I’ve been
through plenty of experimental training, and have participated in real world
data analysis projects. Never once have I seen any physicist doing any
statistics with a graphing calculator (I did see a few when I taught
undergrads mostly from other departments, so there’s that).

~~~
pietroglyph
Perhaps you can learn without a calculator, but these timed statistics tests
do not function without one. Do you really expect people to do repetitive
operations on even n=10 datasets when they only have an hour? You can’t use
Excel (because it’s on more capable PC that you can use to cheat).

At the end of the day, if you want to remove the calculator from the
statistics classroom you probably also have to remove the standardized test.

~~~
jrockway
You can always make problems with steps that involve "easy" numbers. My
experience with high school math was that if you wrote 1.414 when the answer
was sqrt(2), you got the problem wrong. So I am not sure what the calculators
added, really.

~~~
edflsafoiewq
If the answer is ugly, always try squaring it or dividing by pi to see if you
get something that looks rational.

~~~
jrockway
Yeah, it's amusing how often that works. I remember taking the amateur radio
exam which involves some path around impedance and power. The answers were
always in the form of 0.5, 1, 1.414, 2. It's always 1.414 (or 0.707, its close
cousin).

~~~
oefrha
The ham radio exam is a joke (at least for the technician class in the U.S.).
Just a bunch of multiple choice questions from a public question pool. I
literally went through the pool twice before my exam and got a perfect score,
although I hardly knew how to install and operate radios. (I just needed the
license to be able to remotely operate a radio telescope.)

~~~
jrockway
If I recall correctly there is no math until you get to Extra. But I agree
that the questions are trivial and the multiple-choice format makes it even
more trivial.

I am honestly shocked that there are any operators that aren't Extra class.

------
sanj
My son's Eagle Scout project is to collect unused TI-83/4, rehab them, and
give them away to the incoming students.

If you have any kicking around, drop me email and I can fwd to him.

~~~
ISL
That's an awesome Eagle Scout project. Addresses a real community need,
leverages volunteer people-power, scales well, low risk. What an excellent
choice.

That can be readily-combined with fundraising canvassing, too. The Girl Scouts
could pick that up with a drop-box at every cookie table...

------
BoorishBears
I can never be too mad at TI for this, since I'm only a programmer today
because of a Ti-83+ and TI-BASIC

Or at least that's what I thought about I got to the part about the guilt the
author felt over the purchase, and the teacher trying to buy them out of
pocket. It really is despicable that we require 100$+ purchase every student's
education when there are so many realistic cheaper alternatives

~~~
umvi
Shouldn't there be millions of used Ti-83s by now? Seems like there shouldn't
be a real need to buy new when the market should be saturated with used. I
know I have 2 Ti-83s in a box somewhere collecting dust.

This could be solved with a simple sellback program.

1\. Purchase from school for $100

2\. Sell back for $95

3\. Repeat forever until calculator breaks

~~~
chrisseaton
Do most people them them on to college as well though?

~~~
localhost8000
In my college experience, students weren't permitted to use graphing
calculators in math classes, and other math-heavy classes (eg, physics,
chemistry, etc) used simple math on exams and permitted laptops during
labs/classwork.

~~~
krisgee
Same, the only time I used a TI graphing calculator was during one unit of
high school math. I don't think we used them during the test for that semester
either.

The general rule was scientific calculator only.

------
ddevault
Shamelessly posting an old project of mine:

[https://knightos.org](https://knightos.org)

The build server has been dead for years, so you'll have to compile it
yourself. If anyone's TI calculator is gathering dust in your closet, you
might find this to be a fun hack to play with :)

~~~
dang
2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12360757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12360757)

2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747729)

~~~
ddevault
2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10630779](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10630779)

(June) 2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896990)

~~~
dang
Ah yes!

------
mixedmath
From my experience, calculators in classrooms have had a few interesting and
odd effects on intuition and expectation. For years, classes were separated
and had "theoretical" components without calculator use and "computational"
components with calculator use. The computational parts would involve gross
numbers with real-ish answers --- things don't work out so nicely. But the
theory parts would always have very nice answers (if some sort of computation
had to be done).

It turns out that I came to expect theoretical aspects to always work out
nicely; similarly, I often failed to see the light through the hairy parts of
the computational parts.

This came to the fore when I took an Ordinary Differential Equations /
Calculus of Variations course. There were no calculators now --- when we
needed computational power, we used various CAS. I remember being very
confused the first time we showed a solution existed to some ODE, and then
"found it" to any degree of precision we wanted. This was partly theory, but
it was very imperfect! My mathematical intuition ended up sharpening strongly
during that semester.

Now I'm a number theorist. When I teach, I don't use calculators. I'm acutely
aware, however, that early elementary number theory ends up being presented as
a delightful and pure little topic. I think there is some need for continued
computational aspects in math courses, but I haven't quite seen it done just
right yet. (When I do incorporate computational aspects, it's either attached
to a basic programming course or attached to an introductory sagemath CAS
course).

~~~
jacobolus
The computation of early (primary school) math courses could be done with a
counting board, which is a type of general-purpose computer with memory
consisting of buttons/coins and a human for a CPU.

Later (high school / undergraduate coursework), it would be good to use a
programming language like Python or Julia or Swift ....

I also think students should spend at least a few weeks or months using a
slide rule and printed tables for basic arithmetic, but more to learn about
logarithms and mathematical history than to learn about computational
mathematics per se.

------
billfruit
I am always surprised in hearing that American students need a programmable,
graphing calculator. In most of Asia such is not required, only a much cheaper
'scientfic' calculator, even for graduate courses in science and engineering.

Some disciplines even in sciences/engineering, for example Computer Science,
does not require any sort of calculator usually.

~~~
haroldp
It's a relatively recent development. I majored in physics, and made it
through differential equations in the 1990s without one. It's a requirement
for my daughter's high school math class.

~~~
billfruit
It does does raise the question. Why do American highschoolers need it, and
why not them in the rest of the world. Why saddle students and parents with an
additional 100$+ expense, when very possibly it isn't strictly pedagogically
necessary.

~~~
dboreham
For the most part "graphing calculator" seems to be a catch all term for
"scientific calculator with the features we need" in that little actual
graphing is done. But I have seen problems in my son's "Algebra 2" class that
require plotting polynomials on the calculator then describing their roots,
shape etc. As a way to build intuition about the geometric interpretation of
functions, that seems like a reasonable approach although Wolfram alpha would
do a decent job too.

~~~
edh649
In the UK we have similar questions of plotting and describing geometric
functions, however we were simply taught how to plot them by hand, or just
directly interrogate the equation to spot where an asymptote might be, roots
etc.

IMO this gives a much better inherent understanding of equations, rather than
just plugging in some numbers into a calculator and reading what comes out.

~~~
_trampeltier
Even I have two graphic calculators (HP not TI). I never used them really to
draw even a single graph. I mostly use the larger display just to check and
copy more easy previous results. On work I prefer these days to use just my
HP35S (two lines display / RPN).

And yes, drawing the graph by yourself is for sure the way better way to learn
something. But what do we know ...

------
gorgoiler
By ‘eck, when I were a lad we drew cumulative frequency curves and histograms
by hand, and looked up statistical values in the back of a common formulae
book.

When those tasks would have slowed class down — the teacher might not have
wanted us to spend time drawing a curve when the real lesson was interpreting
it — our teachers did it for us and put it on the class TV. Calculating
statistical values was also done quickly with a $17 Casio engineering
calculator.

TI-83s existed, but there was a culture in my school (ironically, a private
one) that graphing calculators were a status-signaling more-money-than-sense
thing. Too bad that such a culture isn’t ubiquitous.

— _Sent from my iPhone XS_

~~~
reaperducer
Anyone else use a slide rule in school?

I have tried to explain it to my wife, but she can't grok it. I'm going to
have to buy one from fleaBay to get her to understand.

~~~
ubermonkey
Nope. Never even saw one used. I understand what it's FOR, but as a means of
calculation they're obsolete.

When I entered the workforce and met engineers much older (say, born 10+ years
before I was in 1970), they'd often have one in a desk drawer, but they
weren't using them either.

~~~
jacobolus
> _I understand what [a slide rule is] FOR, but as a means of calculation they
> 're obsolete._

As a pedagogical tool it is much superior. People who spend a few months using
a slide rule come to a strong intuitive understanding of logarithms that no
number of purely symbolic exercises with logs can ever match. Slide rules are
also quite efficient tools for doing approximate calculations, much faster
than pen and paper.

For anything too sophisticated for a slide rule to handle, students should use
a general-purpose programming language and a full-sized keyboard.

------
shriphani
You don't need a graphic calculator for high school. Hundreds of millions of
kids in China and India graduate without one and do just fine. Differential
calculus is now 400+ years old and generations of humans have done fine
without a graphing calculator.

~~~
commandlinefan
> You don't need a graphic calculator for high school.

Well, you need one if the instructor makes it a requirement, which my kid's
high school does. They're actually tested on linear regression, but they don't
know how to compute sum of least squares: they know how to type a list into
their calculator and run the least squares function. It's on the exam, and if
they don't have the TI graphing calculator with that exact function programmed
into it, they fail the test.

~~~
shriphani
Insane. What on earth is even going on in these school districts? Why don't
they just ask TI to set the math curriculum next?

~~~
gowld
School should just replace the final exam with one question: What is the
confirmation code on the receipt from your $100 TI Education Verification?

------
jhallenworld
It's fun to find the cheapest scientific calculator possible. Here's one for
$1:

[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32848639456.html?spm=a2g0o.p...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32848639456.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.20f65e66p1pfoC&algo_pvid=f56f95ee-2a17-4eca-a0a3-e58c0caee983&algo_expid=f56f95ee-2a17-4eca-a0a3-e58c0caee983-33&btsid=103e61f1-2862-4bb7-852e-1728d3127f1e&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_1,searchweb201603_52)

~~~
chongli
Wow, that looks like a pretty exact clone of the Casio FX-350MS [1]. Apart
from the colour scheme, the shape of the directional keys, and some of the
lettering, they're identical.

[1] [https://www.casio-
intl.com/asia/en/calc/products/fx-350MS/](https://www.casio-
intl.com/asia/en/calc/products/fx-350MS/)

~~~
flixic
Yeah, it's clearly a knockoff. They even borrowed the idea of having five red,
dot-separated letters above the screen. S.U.P.E.R. probably means nothing, but
if Casio has it, Kenko must have it too.

------
jtlienwis
I saw a youtube interviewing the guy that wrote the code for the HP-35. He
said that David Packard got mad when he heard that every engineer in a certain
division of HP was going to get their own HP-35. He said that one calculator
could easily be shared among 4 or 5 people.

~~~
__s
David Packard just wanted engineers to practice peer programming more

------
siraben
As someone who has just got out of the curriculum that enforces usage of the
TI calculators, given the ubiquity of these devices, I wish it was used more
in teaching students about low-level programming, hardware, etc. especially
with older models such as the TI-84+ there's great hacking potential. Compared
to programming on the modern software stack, the Z80 is minimal. Plus, who
said it has to be in assembly? Forth would do!

Some of my own hacking attempts:

[1] [https://github.com/siraben/zkeme80/](https://github.com/siraben/zkeme80/)

[2]
[https://github.com/siraben/ti84-forth/](https://github.com/siraben/ti84-forth/)

~~~
tropo
You can go more mainstream with the TI-84 Plus CE. It has a C compiler.

------
mkl
They didn't in New Zealand; Casio did. Then students come to university and
stop using them much - too limited and primitive compared to computers and
smartphones, too powerful for the courses where we're trying to teach and
assess analytical maths skills.

------
billfruit
I doubt it does. Most of Asia you'd find Casio is the preferred brand, and TI,
HP isn't even available.

The Casio ones should be cheaper in the US too(they usually cost around 10$),
I would think them very popular there as well, unless perhaps TI and HP has
some kind of nerfarious link up with the Dept of Education to monopolize the
market.

------
bjornjaja
Not related to the monopoly stuff but I like HP calculators best! For college
I used an HP 35S—it’s a programmable scientific calculator and fun to program
because it uses RPN stacks for calculations and storing results.

~~~
hvs
Nothing beats my old HP-48G that I used in college. Unfortunately, HP has all
but left that space and my HP 35S (yes, I do own one) is but a shadow of what
HP calculators once were.

~~~
mkl
Well, a 48GX would! (The same but with more RAM that's also expandable.) I
have a 48G too, but nowadays I just use computers.

------
gfrangakis
Why have no edtechs created a low cost version of the TI-83/84? One that
mirrors the functionality of the TI calcs so that they can still be used with
textbooks that are dependent on those. The article estimates the TI's cost
$15-20 to make, but even that seems very high for what they are.

I imagine the harder part is getting approval from the organizations that
administer standardized tests like College Board and the states themselves.

~~~
aidenn0
There are a lot of buttons. Those probably push the BOM up. If you switched to
using a shitty membrane keypad you could probably save a lot of money.

~~~
Slartie
If I remember the innards of my TI-83 correctly (I used it during school 15
years ago, added LED lighting to the display and tore it apart for that
purpose) Texas Instruments already uses a shitty membrane keypad. At least I
don't remember seeing lots of microswitches.

~~~
aidenn0
It's possible. I'm old enough that I had an 82.

------
WillPostForFood
Has math education actually improved with the introduction of calculators?
Easy and equitable solution would be to remove them from classes and tests.

~~~
knolax
Has introducing students to a programmable computer dedicated to math improved
math education? Yes, yes it has. Writing a program to automate certain
computations certainly helps your understanding better than performing said
computations by rote multiple times.

~~~
lopmotr
How often do high school students actually use graphing calculators to write
programs? If it's only one day a year, then they can do that by going to the
computer lab. I have doubts that graphing calculators provide any educational
value except in rare instances. Are those rare instances worth every student
having such an expensive thing for several years?

~~~
knolax
> How often do high school students actually use graphing calculators to write
> programs?

In my experience that's where all the time saved by automating rote
calculation went. Maybe this is a generational thing but for a lot of my peers
Ti-84s were their first experience with programming. It's probably the only
context where most students are exposed to computing that doesn't involve
always connected data-harvesting.

> going to the computer lab

A student has no incentive to write programs if they aren't actually going to
use them.

> Are those rare instances worth every student having such an expensive thing
> for several years?

I remember buying mine at a flea market for literally a quarter. TI-84s have
been around for so long that they're really only expensive if you're hellbent
on only buying new. Every garage sale and Goodwill in the country has at least
one of these for cheap.

------
briffle
In highschool, I had a TI-83, and had fun doing things like programming
blackjack on it, so I could look like I was doing work while having fun. I
went to an engineering school and switched to an HP-48GX for my years at it,
and fell in love with the RPN input. I miss that calculator, but not the TI.

I think I sold the HP 8 years after I bought it for $20 more than I bought it
for. They were discontinued, and surveyors and others that had special modules
that could plug into it would pay a premium for a replacement one.

~~~
klodolph
I had a TI-86 and then won an HP-48GX. At some point the TI-86 was lost or
stolen, I don’t care, the HP-48GX was so much better. I especially liked
working with units, which made everything in science classes that much more
convenient. The only thing I missed about the TI-86 was the Mario clone, with
level editor, and a puzzle game called DStar.

While the TI-83 and 86 had a pedestrian Z80, the HP series apparently had a
weird nybble-serial architecture called Saturn that worked on 64-bit values.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
While it didn't have Mario, the HP48GX did have an almost perfect clone of
Phoenix. If it had been in color, I might have been convinced it was an
emulation.

------
samgranieri
The first program I ever wrote was a quadratic equation solver on a TI-82.
Fond memories.

However, that was in the mid 90s.

It's shocking those calculators are still around and cost that much.

------
twodave
Monopoly or not, I would have not been able to be nearly as lazy in high
school math (circa 2000-2003) if not for the ability to program all the
formulae into my TI-82. At the time the chance to trade study hours for video
games, soccer and guitar was precious to me beyond measure.

------
DonutATX
What I fail to understand is this teachers assumption of financial
responsibility for an expense outside their contract. What kind of union are
they running? Seriously, if all of the teachers simply refused to purchase
mandated equipment for their students, the district would either have to
assume that responsibility, or change policy. By "doing the best for the
students", the teacher allows the district to go unaccountable for their
decisions, perpetuating the problem.

I love teachers, family is full of them, and maybe they shouldn't allow
themselves to be used so ruthlessly by the state?

~~~
MandieD
As a Texas teacher's child, my answer is "what union"? TCTA (Texas Classroom
Teachers' Association) appears to be toothless compared to the unions in other
parts of the country: each year, my mom and every other teacher in her school
district signed a blind contract that said that they could be sent to any
school in the district, to teach any subject and grade level they were
licensed for. In my mom's case, that could have been middle school elective
Spanish (teach colors and numbers, sing fun songs, play Loteria, break up
squabbling tweens), upper level high school Spanish (teach novels, mark
essays, dealing with sophisticated language she hadn't since college) or 9th
grade remedial US History (attempt to make surly teenagers remember important
dates), the sort of change that could greatly expand her workload - hello,
totally new lesson plans!

Not letting the state treat them that way would require looking at how their
colleagues up north manage to get tenure and long-term contracts. But that
would involve being in a true union.

------
ReptileMan
Why do you even need a calculator for a math class? Plotting a graph is
trivial. Calculating stuff too. Pen and paper, and eventually - a compass,
ruler, protractor is all you need to understand high school math.

------
Johnny555
_Giving a child a four-function calculator would leave them woefully
underprepared for the requirements of more advanced math and science classes._

What math class requires a calculator?

I still remember struggling with my Differential Equations class (got a D on
the midterm), and my father said "Why is it so hard? You were always so great
at arithmetic, just use a calculator!"

At the time, a simple graphing calculator was high end (and out of my price
range), nowadays I probably _could_ do most of that homework with an equation
solving smart app)

~~~
boomboomsubban
Staring with calculus I think, we had problems that basically tested our
ability to use a graphing calculator. The classes are designed to use one, and
trying to do so without would be very tedious.

------
dkarl
Standardization is inevitable. Teachers cannot and will not use calculators
unless the module they are using (in the textbook or purchased separately)
contains button by button instructions that work on the exact model of
calculator used in their classroom. Something needs to be done to break the TI
monopoly, though. There's no reason to pay that much for such primitive
functionality, and the need for dedicated devices that can't be used to cheat
won't go away.

~~~
maxerickson
Why "cannot"?

I am not so completely old and my textbooks didn't take any particular model
of calculator into account. Especially all the university math classes where
it started to matter.

~~~
dkarl
Speaking of my high school teachers, some of them could, but enough of them
needed to be walked through it themselves. We only used calculators with
specially designed lesson plans. Most of the time they sat in plastic bins on
the shelf. (I guess we were lucky that the school got grants to buy them.)

It's possible that it's different now. When I was in high school, using
graphing calculators was a new trend, and a lot of the teachers resented
having to teach something they didn't learn in school.

------
DonHopkins
Trurl's Machine, by Stanislaw Lem

Once upon a time Trurl the constructor built an eight-story thinking machine.
When it was finished, he gave it a coat of white paint, trimmed the edges in
lavender, stepped back, squinted, then added a little curlicue on the front
and, where one might imagine the forehead to be, a few pale orange polkadots.
Extremely pleased with himself, he whistled an air and, as is always done on
such occasions, asked it the ritual question of how much is two plus two.

The machine stirred. Its tubes began to glow, its coils warmed up, current
coursed through all its circuits like a waterfall, transformers hummed and
throbbed, there was a clanging, and a chugging, and such an ungodly racket
that Trurl began to think of adding a special mentation muffler. Meanwhile the
machine labored on, as if it had been given the most difficult problem in the
Universe to solve; the ground shook, the sand slid underfoot from the
vibration, valves popped like champagne corks, the relays nearly gave way
under the strain. At last, when Trurl had grown extremely impatient, the
machine ground to a halt and said in a voice like thunder: SEVEN!

[...]

[https://books.google.nl/books?id=xhbFAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT21&lpg=PT...](https://books.google.nl/books?id=xhbFAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT21&lpg=PT21&dq=%22Once+upon+a+time+Trurl+the+constructor+built+an+eight-
story+thinking+machine%22&source=bl&ots=NqPvRaqdoh&sig=ACfU3U2sG1psPfMgDit_OaRuP24tA20AyQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiu3KXXtInmAhUBjqQKHZMiD3sQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Once%20upon%20a%20time%20Trurl%20the%20constructor%20built%20an%20eight-
story%20thinking%20machine%22&f=false)

------
carusooneliner
My old company had the word 'Instruments' in its name but it was not a
competitor to Texas Instruments. When I would meet people and tell them where
I worked, they would often confuse it with TI. This was so widespread that my
company made a t-shirt that had on it the slogan 'We don't make calculators.'

------
intrepidhero
I had a TI-89 in school because having CAS in your pocket was just plain
awesome. Besides, it was much cheaper than mathmatica. Interestingly once I
got into higher level[1] stuff the abilities of your calculator were of much
less importance. Really computational stuff was done on a computer (in the
lab) and any math in class could be handled with a basic calculator. When I
sat for the FE and PE (fundamentals and professional engineering exams) they
require you to use a _dumb_ calculator. No programmability allowed.
[https://ncees.org/exams/calculator/](https://ncees.org/exams/calculator/)

[1] I have an electrical engineering degree from a US public university.

~~~
hermitdev
I took the FE in 2003 in Illinois. All I took in was my basic scientific
calculator (no programability or graphing). I was shocked when they turned
around (against our pre-exam instructions) and allowed non-querty graphing
calculators. I went through the first half with my scientific calc, then ran
home at lunch to get my TI-89 for the second half. Thankfully I lived nearby
the testing facility. Passed the FE on the first try. I've never taken the PE
(have never worked under one for the required period).

------
bonoboTP
In our math classes in Hungary we could use any calculator we wanted, it
doesn't cost too much to get one that can do trig functions and logarithm. One
popular model was the Casio fx-82MS for $10-$20, but you can get cheaper
models as well.

And the "problem" that teachers would not know how your particular brand works
sounds weird. There are so many ways to figure this out. I mean the student
can read the manual. Or ask for help from fellow students.

And our standardized secondary school graduation exam defines what you can do
with calculators:

> On solving the problems, you may use a calculator that cannot store and
> display textual information. You may also use any edition of the four-digit
> data tables. The use of any other electronic device or printed or written
> material is forbidden!

> The use of calculators in the reasoning behind a particular solution may be
> accepted without further mathematical explanation in case of the following
> operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, calculating
> powers and roots, n!, n-choose-k, replacing the tables found in the 4-digit
> Data Booklet (sin, cos, tan, log, and their inverse functions), approximate
> values of the numbers π and e, finding the solutions of the standard
> quadratic equation. No further explanation is needed when the calculator is
> used to find the mean and the standard deviation, as long as the text of the
> question does not explicitly require the candidate to show detailed work. In
> any other cases, results obtained through the use of a calculator are
> considered as unexplained and points for such results will not be awarded.

By the way these sheets are publicly available even in English, e.g. from
Spring 2019:

Basic level:
[http://dload.oktatas.educatio.hu/erettsegi/feladatok_2019tav...](http://dload.oktatas.educatio.hu/erettsegi/feladatok_2019tavasz_kozep/k_matang_19maj_fl.pdf)
Advanced level:
[http://dload.oktatas.educatio.hu/erettsegi/feladatok_2019tav...](http://dload.oktatas.educatio.hu/erettsegi/feladatok_2019tavasz_emelt/e_matang_19maj_fl.pdf)

------
nullc
It's too bad, because much nicer calculators can be made now, e.g.
[https://www.swissmicros.com/dm42.php](https://www.swissmicros.com/dm42.php)

------
djtriptych
I honestly think I’m better at math / CS for going with an HP48G. RPN / stack
based calculator. Drastically better construction. Luckily I went to a school
district that allowed it.

------
TheMagicHorsey
I went to high school outside America. We not only did not have calculators,
we were not allowed to use them in our tests.

Why the hell does a math class need a calculator?

And if you need a calculator, just allow a smartphone instead.

Its a strange class indeed that forbids phones but allows calculators. What a
precise way to thread requirements precisely to require more useless
equipment.

American schools are so annoying.

------
zkid18
Any other example of consumers products that haven't improved dramatically for
a couple decade and exist contrary to the technological progress?

What comes to my mind - a great adoption of electronic dictionaries in Japan
（電子辞書）. Many are Japanese who study English, find it more convenient.

------
MayeulC
It might be a bit late to ask, but out of curiosity, what kind of tools are
you using nowadays to replace calculators? I prefer free and open source ones,
so I have a shortcut to open a terminal with GNU Octave (or python if not
installed).

I use xcas when I need CAS, but the interface is a bit unwieldy.

------
gourabmi
I went to school in the 90-00s. We started off with log-table sheets at our
high school. I bought a Casio FX-991ms at some point of time in the
university. I still love that machine. It has moved along with me across
thousands of miles. It works perfectly even after a decade.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
Out-of-Band Story: I was at the Apple WWDC in the 1990s, where the guy demoed
the graphing calculator app. He had been working on it as an unpaid "pseudo-
hacker" for quite some time.

He received a standing ovation.

Don't you just love geeks?

~~~
sgerenser
Interesting story about the Apple Graphing Calculator app that I probably saw
here on HN a couple years ago:
[https://www.pacifict.com/Story/](https://www.pacifict.com/Story/)

------
pjmlp
On US.

We never had restrictions, HP, Casio, TI, just bring your favourite one into
the class.

------
protomyth
Its funny, that since the TI was allowed to be used during math tests, I
thought it was only for school and I should get a "real" calculator from HP
when I left school.

------
BubRoss
I'm surprised no one just clones TI-85 etc. from scratch. A small pcb, cheap
switches and buttons, a cheap micro controller and cheap lcd screen is all you
would need.

------
peheje
Sorry for offtopic. What is the best iOS alternative to ti89? Ever since
leaving Android that is was I miss the most.

------
symplee
Any know if there's an archive of TI-83 calculator games?

(And, ideally, the ability to play them on the computer.)

~~~
MayeulC
IIRC, TI-Planet has a lot of those, as well as emulators.

~~~
MayeulC
Mostly in French, unfortunately.

Games:
[https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_list.php?cat=Jeux+z80](https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_list.php?cat=Jeux+z80)

A lot of emulators there:
[https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_list.php?cat=Utilitaires...](https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_list.php?cat=Utilitaires+PC+z80)

One of them is web-based:
[https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=1414](https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=1414)
(also hosted online at brandonmeyer.net/projects/TI8XEmu/TI8XEmu.html but I
can't access it now)

Coming second as communities are Omnimaga, and ti-calc.org

I feel like the only redeeming quality of these calculators is the community
around them; and they make kids interested into programming and electronics.
The landscape is looking better and better for who wants to hack his
calculator.

Of course, the most convenient emulator is offered by numworks for their
calculator: it's right there, on their website:
[https://www.numworks.com/simulator/](https://www.numworks.com/simulator/)

------
tyingq
Used, working, TI 83-Plus calculators are fairly cheap on eBay. Saw several
for $27 to $35, shipped.

------
zozbot234
As usual, xkcd [https://xkcd.com/768/](https://xkcd.com/768/) is relevant.

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
This same topic showed up on pol 3 weeks ago.

------
faissaloo
I still fail to understand why they shouldn't just be allowed to use
computers. This is a failure of the education system to adapt.

~~~
Jtsummers
Part of the problem is affordability of $100 calculators for both the students
and the educators. That problem remains, and is worse, if you want to get them
to buy and use computers.

However, this was partially addressed in the article. Phones (if students have
them) have apps which make solving the math problems too easy, scan the
problem and the steps and solution are displayed. So teachers can't permit
them in the classroom if they eliminate the learning objective entirely.

With regard to computers, though, Desmos [0] was spoken of in the article.
They have apps for computers and phones, and they've made some headway with
making the computer program available when students have mandatory tests that
are already on computers.

I don't think your judgement really makes sense, the education system is
adapting. But it's a long process and the problem still remains, if
educational materials and curricula require the use of technology, and the
teachers and students can't afford it, then it's still a failure or sets up
classes of people to fail due to lack of economic viability.

[0] [https://www.desmos.com/](https://www.desmos.com/)

~~~
faissaloo
"Phones (if students have them) have apps which make solving the math problems
too easy, scan the problem and the steps and solution are displayed" If
teaching is obsoleted by technology then it is teaching that must change not
the technology.

~~~
Jtsummers
The material is not obsoleted. We wouldn't say that literacy was useless
because phones can read off everything to us. Why would we say the same about
K-12 mathematics?

~~~
faissaloo
Phones can read things to us but it's grossly inefficient and alot of literacy
is about reading comprehension. The same can't be said for most of K-12
mathematics.

