ticalc.org
Basics Archives Community Services Programming
Hardware Help About Search Your Account
   Home :: Archives :: News :: Symbolic v1.2 [v1.4] for TI-83+

Symbolic v1.2 [v1.4] for TI-83+
Posted by Eric on 17 December 2001, 05:44 GMT

Brandon Sterner of Detached Solutions has released his newest program, Symbolic v1.0 (v1.1 and v1.2 have since been released) for the TI-83+. This is a rather exciting program that allows users to symbolically differentiate and simplify algebraic expressions, functions that previously were reserved only for the TI-89/92/92+. Many other useful features are also included. Check out the Symbolic homepage for more information. It's always great to see people work on math-related programs...let's hope it continues.

Update (Eric): Symbolic v1.4 has now been released.

 


The comments below are written by ticalc.org visitors. Their views are not necessarily those of ticalc.org, and ticalc.org takes no responsibility for their content.


Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
dietsche Account Info
(Web Page)

excellent job, Brandon :)

to everyone else, now, aren't you glad he's not selling this app? =P

     17 December 2001, 18:54 GMT


Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
BigRedDog  Account Info
(Web Page)

AYE!

     17 December 2001, 23:34 GMT

Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
David Phillips  Account Info
(Web Page)

Great job! Are you planning on releasing the source? I'd be interested it in porting it to the 86. I've wanted to write one of these for a while, but never had the time. Does it do pretty print? Are there any plans for that? I think pretty print is incredibly useful, as it allows you to quickly visually verify that a given representation is what you intended.

     17 December 2001, 20:13 GMT

Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
blitter Account Info

I second the motion. David is a really awesome well-known asm programmer, so I know the port would be done very well.

     17 December 2001, 22:18 GMT


Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
JoelThePenguin  Account Info

Yep, the source would be nice...

     18 December 2001, 00:01 GMT

Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
dabaxibomb  Account Info

This is a great program, and i mean no offense to the author, but isnt this program like cheating for students in algebra and calculus. There is a reason that teachers do not let students use 89's and 92's, and now this program has broken this barrier.

     18 December 2001, 04:45 GMT


Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
Brandon Sterner  Account Info
(Web Page)

Yes there is a reason teachers do not permit the 89 or 92. They are two lazy ask students to show all work and actually check it too. If teachers checked to see that work was completely shown, then there is no great disadvantage to technology which does this. Much more can be gained from checking your answers with a calculator than guessing your first answer is correct.

     18 December 2001, 07:10 GMT


Re: Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
Gergely Patai  Account Info

You're right in a sense and wrong in another one... It's possible to do a proper correction if there is a small number of students, but this is normally not the case. But e. g. here at the university there are 15000 people learning. The faculty of electric engineering is the largest one with about 1000 students in one year. Now if we want a test to be corrected in a week, it's practically impossible to do that properly, because of the lacking labour force (and free worktime). So students are not allowed to use ANY graphing calculator (in theory, hehe).

     18 December 2001, 09:04 GMT


Re: Re: Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
Cullen Logan  Account Info
(Web Page)

sucks to go to your college...I'm sure your college is swell, but they need to take a reality check. For one you pay them money...so if grading is hard tough shit, they pay teaching assistants and graders to do that kind of thing. Second...college is supposed to prepare you for the REAL world. Guess what calculators exists in the REAL world. I use one everyday at work. FYI i'm a EE student at the university of texas and apparently my professors see nothing wrong with using an aid to make sure you get the problem correct. In life it often doesn't matter in what manner you come to the answer but moreso that the answer is correct. Better to be safe than to really screw things up. Brandon, I see nothing wrong with this type of APP.

     18 December 2001, 15:13 GMT

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
Gergely Patai  Account Info

Look, I'm Hungarian, and I study at the Technical University of Budapest. I don't have to pay anything, because here the state finances the first diploma for every citizen. :) And it might sound odd for you, but we even have to write syntax error free programs on paper in a very limited amount of time (90 minutes) - Pascal, C, C++ (!), Java (!), assembly etc. It doesn't matter how much you know when you enter, you are a skilled programmer after one year. Same thing goes with calculators: first you have to learn how thing work without any equipment, THEN you can gradually replace the most frequently used tasks to be performed by machines. This is essential. After specialisation, of course, there are no such limits, since doing every pitiful operation on paper would be unrealistic. But until then, you learn to apply them very effectively.

     18 December 2001, 18:31 GMT


Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
lalu

<<Same thing goes with calculators: first you have to learn how thing work without any equipment, THEN you can gradually replace the most frequently used tasks to be performed by machines. This is essential. After specialisation, of course, there are no such limits, since doing every pitiful operation on paper would be unrealistic. But until then, you learn to apply them very effectively.>>

Sounds like good policy :)

     19 December 2001, 03:17 GMT


Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
Gergely Patai  Account Info

At least it works really well in practice.

     19 December 2001, 08:41 GMT


Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
Jason Kovacs  Account Info
(Web Page)

Hey Cullen, you are at The University of Texas at Austin? I'm there too as a first year CS student. We've got to go hang out sometime... As for something on topic, I will add that my Calculus 2 professor and TA's for the discussion sections do not let us use a graphing calculator at all. Sometimes a numerical calculator is needed for computations, however. I expect it to be that way in math courses from now on.

Jason Kovacs
Detached Solutions Staff

     19 December 2001, 06:05 GMT

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
lord_nightrose Account Info
(Web Page)

I've met a few people up here at Michigan Tech who are on this site, too. One was in the ACZ, and we talked to each other all hour through every CS class...

     19 December 2001, 15:47 GMT


Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
lord_nightrose Account Info
(Web Page)

BTW, anyone else here from Midland, MI or the Michigan Tech area?

     20 December 2001, 03:22 GMT

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
lord_nightrose Account Info
(Web Page)

w00t.

Mike McElroy
Same old jackass

     19 December 2001, 15:47 GMT


Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
Cullen Logan  Account Info
(Web Page)

Jason,
Cool man...send me an e-mail sometime. I'm sure you are back at home for the holidays right now, but when you get into to town we can hang out. I've got a few friends in CS, they may have been in some of your classes. My Calc class was M408D and maybe my professor was just different, but he was more concerned with us learning what he was teaching and not with us being able to integrate a function. Just a matter of perspective I suppose, I definately understadn the need for people to learn the fundamentals before just using a program. Although I think it would be hard to use this APP for a real world application without any knowledge of calculus. You couldn't tell someone to find max volume of a box and then hand them the calc with this APP and have them magically know what to do, so I do not believe it is cheating in the slightest. There is no reason for someone to sit there and toil over some boring differentiation when a calc could do it for them. As long as they know how to solve the original problem...why do the grunt work?

Look forward to hanging out Jason.

     19 December 2001, 17:10 GMT

Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
acr34  Account Info
(Web Page)

Yay! no more thinking in math class!

     19 December 2001, 03:23 GMT


Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
DasBoot  Account Info

When do you have to work with eigenvectors and such? It'd be fun to know those thingys...

     19 December 2001, 20:47 GMT

Re: Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
lalu

They're used a lot in physics...

     20 December 2001, 04:11 GMT


Re: Re: Re: Symbolic v1.2 for TI-83+
Eric Sun  Account Info
(Web Page)

Linear Algebra! Very useful in matrix theory...mmmm....

     22 December 2001, 02:19 GMT

1  2  3  4  

You can change the number of comments per page in Account Preferences.

  Copyright © 1996-2012, the ticalc.org project. All rights reserved. | Contact Us | Disclaimer