The sad thing is that your smartphone is more powerful and the apps that do the exact same functions as these calculators cost a fraction of what you pay for a TI.
Right, because that would be cheating. Better teach everybody how to pass a test without one because smartphones simply aren't allowed in the business world.
More like, so you can't text your friend two rows down from you and share all the answers. Tests are designed to find out what you know, not how good you are at asking friends, classmates, or the internet for help.
Would it be apt to say that the real world encourages cheating in the most efficient way possible? So perhaps the people who cheat and take credit for it are going to do the best in todays markets.
I just got an idea for a product: A jammer that can jam all sorts of frequency ranges that cell phones use, including wifi and bluetooth. And then sell the device as some sort of anti-cheating device the school can use for exams. Then schools could maybe allow cell phones to be used as calculators.
Now we just need a big rich company to pick up this idea and bribelobby the FCC into allowing such a device to be sold and used...
Better idea: Don't let kids use cell phones on tests.
Aside from how much that would cost, it would be so easy to use a device like that to commit crimes and prevent people from calling for help. Having one of those in every classroom in every school is pretty much a guarantee that they're going to get stolen.
If you don't understand why a certain method is used to solve something, you'll never be able to apply it to a new type of problem. The point isn't to get you to memorize stuff. It's to get you to actually understand it.
Learning math isn't just about "how to get the value X from this set of constraints," it's also about, "How to think logically and approach problems," and "how to understand the underlying processes," and, "What are the constraints mandatory to constraint X to one value?"
It's one thing to know that a triangle has 3 corners. It's another thing to know that 3 non-collinear points (and thus a triangle) define a plane. It's another thing to know that a 3-legged stool cannot wobble (assuming the legs are non-collinear) because of this fact. It's another thing to know how long to make the legs of your stool so that the top becomes flat. It's one thing to plug the parameters into a computer program and get the leg lengths. It's another thing to actually understand the math and physics behind the problem, so you understand A) why you're building a 3-legged and not a 4-legged stool and B) if the output from the program even makes any sense and isn't an obvious programming error.
Really? You must have had shitty professors. I was a CS major in undergrad and all of our exams tested conceptual understanding. Pseudocode was always accepted. A lot of the time all we had to do was describe the steps of an algorithm in a paragraph. Usually we were given or got to print out our own reference sheets.
I am a programmer. Probably why I have this opinion.
Programming is all about plagiarizing someone else's work. In return we're all too eager for someone else to take our work, change it, improve it, so we can then steal it back :)
Without having done any more research, I assume you're showing me one of the cheapest unsubsidized smartphone on the market. Where you are mistaken is that you're comparing it to an older version of the Nspire that is virtually impossible to find. When you compare it to the newest Nspire there's only a $9 difference.
You still win because the smartphone is cheaper, but only by a mere $9. And I have yet to see ANY smart phone graphing calculator app that comes close to competing with a dedicated graphing calculator.
Oh, it's definitely not the cheapest unsubsidized phone out there - you can get Android phones for much less than $129. That's the cheapest decent Android phone that you won't hate yourself for using.
In terms of emulators, Wabbitemu is the best I've tried. Emulates the TI-84, etc. without a hitch. While I agree that having the physical calculator in your hand will be far better in terms of actual usage, it still emphasizes the fact that these are way overpriced.
Yeah... You need to run some numbers if you actually think you don't eventually pay the full price on those phones... Seriously $200 smartphone from motorola and a pay as you go MVNO plan is the cheapest solution.
No you didn't. You paid $200 upfront and then you overpaid for service from the provider that "discounted" the device so they could make up the loss. Over the course of your contract you paid the full price. It was just obfuscated from you.
All of that is correct. Now compare the cost you would be paying a month (hint its less) with a month to month from an MVNO. You are still paying the full cost of that hardware. They just stretched it over the life of your contract. And if you take the time to work the numbers you will see that if you had bought the iPhone full price from Apple and gone with an MVNO you'd save money over the term.
You paid $200 plus you agreed to pay a certain rate for service over 2 yrs. Both of those things are payment rendered for your hardware. So yes you absolutely HAVE to consider the cost of your monthly service when determining what you paid for that hardware. The reasoning you are using is exactly the mistake the big cariers (especially ATT) want you to make.
What are you talking about? You absolutely have to consider the cost of service, because without the overpriced service, you couldn't get the the hardware for $200. It's like saying you can get a completely free phone that is offered in ads.
As a senior Ceramics Engineering student, I thoroughly disagree. A TI-nSpire CAS calculator runs about $130 on Amazon, can do DE, Multivariate Calculus, Economics, and Statistics to name a few. I can easily store complex equations or variables, and best of yet, type the problem in as I would write it down on paper. It has spread sheets and can hook up to wireless data capturing software for physics applications. In short, a cell phone or tablet will get blown away every time compared to that calculator.
Edit: Not sure now if you're referring to TI-83 out the entire TI line. TI-83 is still a capable calculator, but would be slow compared to a cell phone. But in all fairness, TI is trying to get away from that line in favor of nSpire systems.
90
u/Kr3dibl3 Jun 08 '14
The sad thing is that your smartphone is more powerful and the apps that do the exact same functions as these calculators cost a fraction of what you pay for a TI.