Re: Why are TI Calcs so inferior?
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jwardell@aol.com wrote:
>
> <<And finally, if you are in high school, you don't really need anything
> in the TI9x or TI8x range. I believe that most high schools do a very
> poor job of training people rigerously today. Qualitative approaches
> are good, but it all should be done with good old paper and pencil, and
> when you've truly mastered it, you can go on.>>>
>
> I don't know what high school you come from. I needed a 8x sophomore and
> junior year, and the 92 was a great help senior year. Perhaps you didn't
> get Pre Calc till college? In fact, we were required to buy calculators
> junior and senior year.
He does have a point here. Back in the pre dawn of early man (i.e.
1985) when I was in high school, we had nothing but Ti-30s and casios to
do math with. Nobody back then had home PCs, or graphing calcs (they
didn't exist). The teacher actually had this white stick and would draw
pictures on the cave wall, instead of twiddling his/her thumbs while the
projector model of the Ti-8X drew the graph for him/her.
You only NEED a graphing calc because somebody arbitrarily made it a
requirement. Last time I checked, which was real damn recently,
calculus hadn't changed much in the last 300 or so years. So the 30
generations before yours and mine never really learned calc?!?! C'mon!
the most eloquent solutions to the most difficult mathematical problems
known to man were made in the 1920s and 1930s, before IBM was even a
room full of computers to add 2 and 2.
Old Goatboy may have no clue about hardware issues, but he is correct
about the basic skill slide that is going on. When was the last time
any one here figured out when the calc was wrong? How many of the
millions of Ti users out there DIDN'T!?
Also don't forget that the reason why Ti calcs are so popular in high
school is that they do everything for your pre-calc and calc teacher
except give the lecture. Check out their website to see how much they
go out of their way to spoon feed your math teachers. For your
benefit? Surely you jest! Its to sell calcs, and its working damn
well. So what if your education suffers because your teachers are too
lazy, and let Ti work out the curriculum? Who loses then......?
All anyone can say is that the "were required" to have a Ti-8X calc;
sure as heck, nobody ever really "needs" one to learn what Isaac Newton
and Leibnitz dreamt up three centuries ago.
<pre>
--
Mark Wilson
"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange eons even death may die."
</pre>
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