Re: I'm new...
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The following question was recently posted here:
> What are the major differences between the 82 and 83?
and Matthew S Trent replied with following opinion:
> Get an 85.
Let's stick to the original question. The TI-83 is basically a
replacement for the TI-82 -- it does everything that the 82 could,
only more slickly and conveniently due to several years of
wishful input from heavy users of the TI-82 (mostly in the
educational community). There are literally dozens of small
improvements, and a few major ones that could be of serious
importance, depending on what you intend to do with the
calculator. The TI-82 is still an excellent calculator for
studying mathematics (up through calculus), but the 83 is really
better, at the same price, and no-one should be buying an 82
nowadays.
There are some changes in _syntax_, including the order of
operation followed when an ambiguous numeric or algebraic
expression is entered. All functions now require the argument
to be enclosed in parentheses -- for example sin X is not a
legal expression on the TI-83, it has to be sin(X). This is
good mathematics, but it means that there are bound to be some
awkwardnesses involved in transferring programs via the link from
the TI-82 to the TI-83 (you can't go the other way). However,
this is a temporary problem, which will disappear when the world
is full of TI-83's. Sometimes it is important to be a pioneer!
Some very convenient tricks have been built into the TRACE
feature for studying graphical behavior. And graphs can now be
_individually_ styled as dot or connected or heavy or... Big
improvement in shading for studying inequalities -- overlapping
shadings now criss-cross (!).
A very nice Solver has been built in that allows the user to
specify any desired n-1 values for a symbolic statement involving
n variables, and numerically chases the value of the nth variable
without requiring any algebraic solution for this variable (which
would be impossible in many cases, anyway). Very powerful!
A big expansion has been made in the capacity to handle lists.
Lists are no longer restricted to length 99, and in addition to
the standard list variables L1 through L6, it is now possible for
the user to create lists with multi-letter names such as TIME.
This capacity was needed in order to allow the TI-83 to work
flexibily with the CBL. Analogously, matrices are no longer
restricted to size 6x6, and the user has ten, rather than just
six, to play with.
A capability (limited) for using _strings_ has been added. This
is probably of interest primarily to the programmer, but we may
yet see some creative ideas for using this feature in direct mode
to do neat stuff. The programmer is still limited to caps-only
letters, which may seem a major limitation to some (the TI-85 was
way ahead of its time here). But TI is now providing access to
assembly-language programming for the TI-83 on an official basis
(the Z-shell stuff for the TI-85 was strictly a user discovery
and development) so we may see some "magic" in this regard some
day. If you want to do heavy programming you might want to
get a TI-85, though there are certainly better programming
environments around (the TI-92, for example). It is certainly
possible to do some deep stuff with programs on the TI-82, and
the TI-83 should be even better. But this is a bit off the point...
A major fact is that TI has also _stuffed_ the 83 with built-in
programs in two areas: finance and statistics. If you do any
work at all in either of these areas you will think you died and
went to heaven when you look through the manual. To take just
one example, the question about simulating the rolling of dice
that was passed around the list here was answered directly by the
new randint function on the TI-83 -- randint(1,12,50) will return
a list of 50 numbers that might have been generated by rolling a
12-sided die, if you had one. And it is possible to pick
normally-distributed random numbers, and like that...
In short, if at all possible you should try to take your TI-82
back and exchange it for a TI-83. TI's plan was for the TI-83 to
quickly drive the TI-82 off the market (as I understand it), but
merchandisers who had a stockpile of TI-82's are still trying to
sell them off, it seems.
I'm glad that people are still enjoying their TI-85's (I've got
one of my own). It's a nice calculator, too. But I ask students
in my math classes to get a TI-83 -- it's the right calculator
for this purpose.
RWW Taylor
National Technical Institute for the Deaf
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester NY 14623
>>>> The plural of mongoose begins with p. <<<<
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