Ti really needs to stop with the artificial product differentiation. There's no reason 15 years after the Nspire CX CAS came out that everyone of their calculators can't do CAS.
Genuine question, who uses these in practice? In my experience, calculators beyond the basic were always banned in high school and college, cause everyone's so afraid people might store something into them, and afterwards it's just matlab and python. It's not like laptops aren't a thing that everyone has on hand.
What calculators are you guys using that aren't in academia anymore and don't need the "exam approved" limitations?
Or are we all just using software on our computers now.
That would be sad.
(I've had a Casio fx-991EX on my desk for a few years, that replaced a broken Casio fx-991ES. Though designed for academia, its operation is burned into my brain at this point.)
I collect HP calculators: I have an HP 12C, an HP 15C Collector's Edition (there are a few of them left still for sale), an HP 32Sii, and an HP 48SX. I sometimes use them, but whenever I'm in front of a computer (which is almost all the time), I find myself using the Unix dc command.
Handheld calculators are nice, but outside of exam settings, I could use a smartphone or a computer, though calculators are nice when I want to work distraction-free through something that requires performing calculations. I believe this is why HP largely exited the calculator market: HP's target market was professionals, and cheap computers and smartphones killed the calculator market for them, similar to how electronic calculators killed the slide rule. Texas Instruments, however, is still in the calculator business, largely due to their successful courting of American middle and high schools, as well as ETS and other testing agencies, beginning in the 1990s. I don't know the situation in Japan regarding calculator usage, but I see Casio scientific and graphing calculators proudly displayed at electronics stores such as Yodobashi Camera and Bic Camera.
If I’m reaching for calculator, I’m reaching for my phone.
At that point I’m either using the stock iOS calculator or iHP48, HP48 clone.
It mostly depends on which page of apps I’m on and which is closest.
I like the unit conversion on the iOS calculator, easier to use for trivial calcs than the HP.
Biggest gripe on iOS is a single memory. On the HP I’m mostly hooked on the infinite stack, and that’s why I use it over the HP-42 clone app I have as well.
We had to buy those calculators for highschool and it was a waste of money, felt like somebody must be paying somebody off to have thousands of students buy a device that they will certainly never have to use (and is of little educational value).
Agreed, it's insane to me that in an era of Google Colab (et al) schools still require students to shell out >$100 for one of these. I'm sure there is some backroom arrangement with schools of some kind.
You're paying $100 for completely antiquated hardware where its core feature is "it doesn't do much".
Pretty much any professional environment that you will need calculations will have access to a computer that can do these calculations significantly faster and better.
I thought my HP was pretty cool in high school, but pretty much the moment I graduated I stopped using it because I figured out how to use Excel and/or a programming language to do number crunchy stuff. Even for CAS stuff, I would just use Wolfram Alpha or SageMath (depending on how ambitious I'm feeling with setting stuff up).
I can't remember the last time I used a calculator outside of showing someone else how to use it.
This is probably right, but just to note that it's very much a generational thing. When I got a TI-83 (and then eventually an 89!) it was easily the most advanced handheld computing hardware I had ever been exposed to. The iPhone made sense to me, and I knew it would be huge, the day it came out because of these amazing calculators.
I know technology has moved on and all, but much nostalgic respect to these amazing calculators.
>We had to buy those calculators for highschool and it was a waste of money, felt like somebody must be paying somebody off to have thousands of students buy a device that they will certainly never have to use (and is of little educational value).
I suppose it depends if you took advanced math classes or not.
It's wild how much curricula within high schools must differ, because my school went out of its way to teach and encourage/require its use on nearly every quiz and exam. We joked sometimes class felt more like calculator class than math class. This was Texas, too, which I hardly consider a pioneer in education. Maybe TI pride?
Now that I think about it, this could have been a strategy my high school drilled into us as a way to increase SAT scores, since TI-84s were allowed to be used there.
I had a TI-83 in high school and upgraded to a TI-89 for college circa 2002. Used the heck out of those calculators because I did all the math and physics prerequisites for an engineering degree before switching to CS. It also helped me get a B in Linear Algebra thanks to holding a cheat sheet document for the final exam. I had no trouble with the likes of Calculus 3 and differential equations but for some reason the later material in linear algebra didn't click with me.
TI-86 is the one in my case. We had to buy it in high school, and I used it so much in high school and in university after (I still have it in a box), that it's the only calculator I've since used. I absolutely have to have a TI emulator on my phone, and have paid for multiple ones along the years.
I use my emulated TI-86 every other day, and prefer it to any other UI I've seen on calculators on phones.
When I have a laptop available, I of course use excel or wolfram alpha for anything demanding, but when on the go, I like my emulated TI-86.
I got a ton of value out of mine... but I graduated in 2011, when smartphones were only just taking off and relatively few people had them yet.
But my wife is also a high school teacher and one of the most consistent problems I hear about from her is smartphones being a distraction. If she lets a kid use their smartphone as a calculator, odds are they'll soon be scrolling content feeds, playing games, or chatting with others. If her school required students to have a graphing calculator with limited functionality, it would probably be a benefit to her classroom.
> The keypad layout removes clutter and makes commands and shortcuts easier to see, so you can work faster with fewer steps.
I don't see it. I compared a screenshot of one of these to a older T-84, and it looks like they have same number of buttons, and the buttons are just as cluttered (except the EVO has secondary labels on the keycaps instead of the case).
That's a good thing, since one of the best things about calculators is they typically have a ton of buttons for quick access to a lot of functions.
On my favorite designs ever? The first TI-Nspire "battleship" keyboard. Mini alpha-symbol keys in the corners of actual keys. It looked so annoying, but my muscle memory got very good at it.
Looking at the price of this and other calculators, I wonder if there's a market for "dumb calculators" analogous to dumb terminals: a device with the calculator form factor, keyboard, and display, but where the actual computation happens on a paired computer/phone or a cloud endpoint over WiFi/Bluetooth.
TI is like the Intuit of the education world. I want to love them but this is ridiculous - a N4120 celeron laptop is the same price as this new calculator - it might be a garbage laptop but it's doing a heck of a lot more for your $160 than this calculator is.
Includes GCD and LCM, some of the newer ones don't have them.
If you want graphing, there is the newish fx-CG100 has a nice display, but they removed Casio basic, it now only has micro Python (way too awkward to type on a tiny keypad):
Well, the TI-83/84 are called a graphing calculators for a reason: you can plot equations and datasets with them and look at them right there[1]. Looking at graphs is huge for learning, or at least it was for me, and school isn't just about plugging things in and getting an answer (or shouldn't be, at least).
Doesn't mean it's not overpriced, but that's one reason and you can get a used TI-83/84 for like $30 or less. They pretty much never break.
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1. Okay, the Casio can QR-code-link you to a graph, but if I have internet/smartphone there are better graphing tools anyway, like Desmos.
> Show me a highschool math problem you can't do on a $12 Casio scientific like the classic FX-300MS
There isn't one.
The TI-83 is just a $160 tax on every high school student. There is precisely zero use in a graphing calculator before university.
If you ever need a plot of literally any function you'd be plotting in high school, you should be able to do a very quick, very rough approximation by hand. If you can't, you haven't learned the material.
156MHz and 3,5MB user memory... Why do I feel like that is a joke these days.. I think some ESP32s are faster and have more memory, but not sure if they are fully comparable...
I briefly laughed out loud at another comment saying their lightbulb has more computing power than that, because that's completely plausible for a wifi bulb today.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 84.4 ms ] threadNot as bad as I would've expected. Also, apparently it includes a very simple Python environment? https://education.ti.com/en/product-resources/eguides/eguide...
I will buy one anyway because calculators remain a modest luxury that I want to indulge.
National exams will be wild for the kids capable of programming or vibe coding.
15 year old me in math class programming my loaned TI-82: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
Oh no.
Or are we all just using software on our computers now.
That would be sad.
(I've had a Casio fx-991EX on my desk for a few years, that replaced a broken Casio fx-991ES. Though designed for academia, its operation is burned into my brain at this point.)
Handheld calculators are nice, but outside of exam settings, I could use a smartphone or a computer, though calculators are nice when I want to work distraction-free through something that requires performing calculations. I believe this is why HP largely exited the calculator market: HP's target market was professionals, and cheap computers and smartphones killed the calculator market for them, similar to how electronic calculators killed the slide rule. Texas Instruments, however, is still in the calculator business, largely due to their successful courting of American middle and high schools, as well as ETS and other testing agencies, beginning in the 1990s. I don't know the situation in Japan regarding calculator usage, but I see Casio scientific and graphing calculators proudly displayed at electronics stores such as Yodobashi Camera and Bic Camera.
At that point I’m either using the stock iOS calculator or iHP48, HP48 clone.
It mostly depends on which page of apps I’m on and which is closest.
I like the unit conversion on the iOS calculator, easier to use for trivial calcs than the HP.
Biggest gripe on iOS is a single memory. On the HP I’m mostly hooked on the infinite stack, and that’s why I use it over the HP-42 clone app I have as well.
Or often just a python repl
10yrs ago they would have been 4 to 5 figures.
Now they are what? A couple hundred?
How in the world is a TI graphing calculator still $160? These 30yr old calculator chips apparently hold their value like gold…
"Online calculator included (four-year subscription) •($80 value)"
There should be a cheap open source calculators for schools and exams. It’s ridiculous that TI is still charging this.
- was cheaper than a TI
- had a primitive CAS system
- teachers had no idea how to put it into test mode
It carried me through AP calc BC, I would’ve gotten <4 off of my own knowledge alone
You're paying $100 for completely antiquated hardware where its core feature is "it doesn't do much".
Pretty much any professional environment that you will need calculations will have access to a computer that can do these calculations significantly faster and better.
I thought my HP was pretty cool in high school, but pretty much the moment I graduated I stopped using it because I figured out how to use Excel and/or a programming language to do number crunchy stuff. Even for CAS stuff, I would just use Wolfram Alpha or SageMath (depending on how ambitious I'm feeling with setting stuff up).
I can't remember the last time I used a calculator outside of showing someone else how to use it.
I know technology has moved on and all, but much nostalgic respect to these amazing calculators.
I suppose it depends if you took advanced math classes or not.
Now that I think about it, this could have been a strategy my high school drilled into us as a way to increase SAT scores, since TI-84s were allowed to be used there.
I use my emulated TI-86 every other day, and prefer it to any other UI I've seen on calculators on phones.
When I have a laptop available, I of course use excel or wolfram alpha for anything demanding, but when on the go, I like my emulated TI-86.
But my wife is also a high school teacher and one of the most consistent problems I hear about from her is smartphones being a distraction. If she lets a kid use their smartphone as a calculator, odds are they'll soon be scrolling content feeds, playing games, or chatting with others. If her school required students to have a graphing calculator with limited functionality, it would probably be a benefit to her classroom.
> The keypad layout removes clutter and makes commands and shortcuts easier to see, so you can work faster with fewer steps.
I don't see it. I compared a screenshot of one of these to a older T-84, and it looks like they have same number of buttons, and the buttons are just as cluttered (except the EVO has secondary labels on the keycaps instead of the case).
That's a good thing, since one of the best things about calculators is they typically have a ton of buttons for quick access to a lot of functions.
https://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=NMAH-DOR2014-05202...
There's even knockoffs of it for $1: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809744184708.html
I picked one up when the 99 cent store was shutting down. It works fine.
Look what you can get for $20: https://www.casio.com/intl/scientific-calculators/product.FX...
TI is like the Intuit of the education world. I want to love them but this is ridiculous - a N4120 celeron laptop is the same price as this new calculator - it might be a garbage laptop but it's doing a heck of a lot more for your $160 than this calculator is.
https://www.amazon.com/Casio-fx-115ESPLS2-Advanced-Scientifi...
Includes GCD and LCM, some of the newer ones don't have them.
If you want graphing, there is the newish fx-CG100 has a nice display, but they removed Casio basic, it now only has micro Python (way too awkward to type on a tiny keypad):
https://www.amazon.com/Casio-ClassWiz%C2%AE-Calculator-Funct...
The older ones that still have basic:
https://www.amazon.com/Casio-fx-9750GIII-Graphing-Calculator...
BTW, here is a review I made of many calculators, measuring keyboard efficiency: (HP-15c still the best)
https://github.com/jhallen/calculator/wiki
Doesn't mean it's not overpriced, but that's one reason and you can get a used TI-83/84 for like $30 or less. They pretty much never break.
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1. Okay, the Casio can QR-code-link you to a graph, but if I have internet/smartphone there are better graphing tools anyway, like Desmos.
There isn't one.
The TI-83 is just a $160 tax on every high school student. There is precisely zero use in a graphing calculator before university.
If you ever need a plot of literally any function you'd be plotting in high school, you should be able to do a very quick, very rough approximation by hand. If you can't, you haven't learned the material.
https://www.swissmicros.com/products
These are clones of various older calculators.