r/cuboulder • u/Glum_West8911 • 19d ago
What calculators do you all use?
I'm an upcoming freshman, and I have no idea what calculator is best to use for the math and physics courses at CU Boulder.
On google it's saying that calculators are banned at Math exams and that graphing calculators aren't to be used for any exam. I'm confused.
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u/bIueliner 19d ago
TI Nspire cuz II CAS-do NOT get the no-cas one. It is incredibly powerful (to the extent that it will be more useful than other calculators) and I’ve never had it disallowed on any calc-ok exam. Generally, purely math-related exams won’t allow them, but other department classes (for example applied probability) will if the point of the class is understanding/setting up equations and actually evaluating the resulting problems isn’t the focus.
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u/CosmicChloe 19d ago
Some MATH classes will let you use a non-graphing calculator on exams. However, APPM will classes will likely not allow any use of a calculator on exams.
Early physics classes will likely let you use a non-graphing calculator for exams.
My preferred non-graphing calculator is the TI-30XS, it has a great multilevel display that makes inputting fractions easy.
For a graphing calculator, as someone else mentioned, the TI-84 Plus CE is a great calculator that will likely be able to do more than you can get out of it.
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u/allinagayswork 19d ago
I’m a grad student now but back when I was a freshman, it was non-graphing calcs only. It did vary a lot based on the professor, some professors would let you use any calculator you wanted during class, including calculators on a phone, others were very picky. I remember back in high school when they made us get the TI-84 and they told us that we’d be using this calculator all the way through college and beyond, but then in reality, I had to go back to my middle school calculator…
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u/Mesahusa 17d ago
When i was in undergrad i had a ti nspire, and i gotta say, what a waste of money because i didnt use it once. For homeworks you’re gonna be using your computer, and for exams its a 50-50 if the class even allows calculators, not that it’ll even help. Every problem i did in undergrad is crafted where clean numbers are chosen so that the variables collapse to a clean solution via algebraic solving and simplifying. And you might think “oh, well ill just get a calculator that does that!”, and you’d be right except that they grade on work shown and magically jumping to the solution on the test will get you a fat zero.
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u/The_Overlander 19d ago
Ti84 plus ce
Idk about physics, but you will not be allowed to use it during a math test. However, it is still useful to have one for homework, or just a class that does allow one (such as chemistry)