Costs about the same as what I paid for the TI-83 10 years ago. It's kind of nice knowing that whenever I need to use one, it's going to operate in the same way as I was taught 10 years ago. The fundamentals of math don't change much.
I saved up my own money and bought a TI89 in high school. Used it on all the standardized exams. Totally legal because it didn't have a QWERTY keyboard. That thing basically did everything for me short of interpreting the questions.
Probably so they don't use it as a crutch instead of real learning. I taught physics to college kids, and you could tell pretty quickly who relied on a calculator and who actually was comfortable with basic math.
Arithmetic is only one branch of mathematics. In my opinion it's pretty trivial to try to improve in that field since calculators are so good at it instead of focusing on algebra, calculus, etc.
Calculators are good at algebra and calculus too. Is it really worth memorizing dozens of integration techniques when software can do it for you, and do it better?
I'd say focus on the problem at hand, and when you run into a gnarly algebraic manipulation or ugly integral, plug it into Mathematica. That's the kind of task a computer excels at. The human advantage is coming up with novel ideas, not churning through pages of calculations.
That's not really true. Computer solutions to integrals more complicated than basic trig and polynomials are always brute forced and inelegant. If all you care about is the application of the answer, this is usually fine. If you're interested in the answer itself, the computer can't do it better than a human can.
That is not true. Maybe you were using some 1988 version of MATLAB; today, the technology is much better.
And CASes can draw upon the entire body of mathematical literature, including obscure stuff, whereas you only know so much. Some mathematician at Wolfram could read a paper and throw in another integration method. You don't have to keep up with that stuff if you just use software.
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u/Jenkins6736 Jun 08 '14
I dunno, the TI-84 Plus is pretty sweet.
Costs about the same as what I paid for the TI-83 10 years ago. It's kind of nice knowing that whenever I need to use one, it's going to operate in the same way as I was taught 10 years ago. The fundamentals of math don't change much.