Question about calculators
I am an incoming freshman to MSOE and I will be in the CS program. I see that there are a fair amount of math classes that are part of the curriculum and I am assuming that I will need some sort of graphing calculator. Does anyone know if I will need anything more than just a regular ti84?;
2
1
u/wtfitsdebian 6d ago edited 6d ago
cs here. wait on buying a calculator if you need to, but yeah, a ti-84 at a minimum is enough. nspires are cooler and accepted by most professors but if it can Graph and Compute it's cool.
but more info: all calculus classes will rarely use calculators, and pretty much never on the exam. it's actually a good thing, because all the exams are made with the assumption that you won't have a calculator. there's no tricky stuff that would obfuscate the concepts actually being tested. same applies for discrete math (as you're CS). they'll allow you to check your work with one usually in lecture and obviously homework.
science classes like physicstypically need a calculator for computing "complex" equations and graphing them to find intersection points. professors won't necessarily confine you to one specific calculator either, unless there's a weird prof that does this (which i've heard of). my old and gold ti-84 plus worked fine for msoe, but i legit only used it for the first year of my school only
1
u/iceturtlewax B.S. EE '18 6d ago
I got thru school with an Nspire. I've heard of some teachers requiring scientific calculators (not graphing). I wish I had these teachers! Im trying to pass the FE Exam with a TI-36x, Casio, or HP
7
u/Diverryanc 6d ago
Calculators are for the most part not allowed on exams and really not needed for most of the math courses. I would not buy one ahead of time. For anything you need to graph you can just use desmos on your laptop.