Re: Why are TI Calcs so inferior?

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Re: Why are TI Calcs so inferior?

Ok,


    as the origintor of why people shouldn't use calculators, i guess i
have some explaining to do.


- People who emailed saying things like, "I suppose you want to take the
derivative of some god-awful function" by hand.  Please!! I'm not saying
the Calculator is not an invaluable tool.  It just doesn't teach
Calculus.  Someone pointed out teachers love the TIs because teachers
have the whole cirriculum set for them.  Amen to that.  It makes
students + teachers lazy.  Sure, now that I understand calculus, I can
use the calculator, but if I didn't understand, it would be detrimental.


-  I said, "Students need to learn Calculus, not how to take derivatives
and integrals."  I mean to say: anyone can learn the multiplication
table by memorizing it, understanding how those numbers correspond to
anything is what is important.  Calculus classes, esp. in High school,
especially when taught w/ a calculator, teach memorization of a process.
 I bet most people who fall into this trap don't remember things (off
the top of their heads) like, what exactly is a function, how can you
tell if a function is continuous.  Can you recall the definition of the
derivative in terms of limits.
Even arithmetic operations are not completly understood, do you know
what an *average* is?? Sure, anyone on the list can easily find the
average of a group of numbers, but who understands what it represents?
These sound mundane, and nit-picky.  *Mathematics* is hard folks.


-- What is an Average are hard _concepts_ for people, yet I bet everyone
on this list can easily do one.


- Why is this important to me?


I also made several claims about Engineers, mathematicians and doctors.
Let me expand a bit on those.


Engineers are not mathematicians by any mean.  They apply math, to solve
problems, in fact, memorizing those processes is probably exactly what
an engineer should do.


Same with doctors, doctors learn how the body works, but then they
memorize a bunch of procedures, in fact, I bet I _could_ learn how to be
a doctor, without knowing all that much about how the body works.


Mathematicans, If you want to be a mathematician, realize that you
should try to not use a calculator to learn calculus, nor algebra.
Maybee if you're interested in some kind of numerical technique, sure,
but math is not a bunch of procedures.


Am I saying *dont use calculators*  Of course not!!  They are amazing
tools, and have led to the discovery of some of the most important
physical and even mathematical phenomons.  I AM saying *don't rely on
the calculator* to teach you math, to pass your exams, to program
formulas in.  People misinterpret getting a 5 on the AP as having
someone be a good mathematician.  Getting a 5 is a good indicator, but
it does not make mathematicians.


Albert Einstein enlightened us with the quotation:
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."


It sure is.


-nick
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