Re: Why use a high end calculator at all?
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Re: Why use a high end calculator at all?
Midnight Wells writes:
> ......
>
> I am interested in upgrading my skills to provide more sophisticated
> analysis of the information I receive.
>
> Now that the preamble is over, my question is: why do people use
> high-end calculators, such as the various TI models discussed in this
> forum?
>
> I use Excel Ver 5 to produce my reports: are there many *practical*
> statistical functions that are not available natively in a package
> like Excel?
>
> ......
Upgrading our skills is what it is all about. I think the best reason for
investigating and learning to use new calculating tools is the amount of
_learning_ involved in the experience. The range of products available
today to perform practical tasks (e.g. statistical computations) greatly
exceeds that available ten years ago, which in turn greatly exceeded...
Learning to ride each new "horse" as it comes along, and exploring the
new territories that you can newly ride to, is a major (though rewarding)
challenge.
If one were to learn to use the full power of a product like Excel, perhaps
one would not want to drive anything else -- you've got an ATV there.
But it burns a lot of gas! If you just need to pop down to the corner store
you want something more handy, which is where the calculators come in.
Well, I've mixed the metaphors rather badly there. However, the power
available to the user through, say, a TI-83, is in fact comparable to the
power that took an expensive desktop computer application to deliver ten
years ago, and was only available through mainframes ten years before that.
In the meantime, even the most inexpensive calculators (under $15) now
on the marketplace come with features that were hardly available on top-end
calculators a relatively few years back. Where will we be ten years from
now? And what should we be doing during those ten years to be ready to use
the new capablilities we can predict?
It is significant that data developed (entered, calculated, whatever) on a
hand-held calculator such as the TI-83 or TI-92 can be _exported_ to a desktop
environment for further processing or incorporation into a display. And data
collected, in whatever way, via a computer connection can likewise be
_imported_ back into the handheld environment. This linking feature, and the
free exchange of data in this fashion, is one of the key reasons for working
with a "high-end" calculator rather than one of the $15 jobbies. No-one should
be keying in data sets from printed listings any more.
There is really no sharp dividing line between a calculator, a laptop, and a
desktop any more (if there ever was). I always tell my students about the
whole set of different-sized screwdrivers, hammers, etc. that I keep on my
workbench in the basement, all of which I find a use for from time to time.
Of course, these don't cost as much as calculating tools do, and they tend to
stay more current (though there always seem to be new gadgets to buy at the
hardware, store too).
Because calculators are so mobile, and inexpensive, some innovations may be
introduced at this level that take longer to reach the mainstream products
(such as Excel). In the area of statistics, one can think of the "box and
whisker" charts that can be drawn on the TI-83, for example. Probably you
could program these into Excel (I'm not an expert), but it is nice to have
them right at hand so you can take a quick-and-dirty peek at your results
when you are just "playing around". This whole business of working
_informally_ is probably the final difference I would suggest between working
with a calculator -- no matter how high-end -- and a computer. On a nice sunny
day like today it is great to be able to sit out on the front porch with my
TI-92 fiddling with some results. If they come out right I can link them up
to my Mac later and print out the listings. If not, perhaps inspiration will
strike as I am driving in to work, and I'll haul the TI-92 out again when I get
there. It's not quite as good as the days when you only had to carry around a
pencil and a bit of paper, waiting for inspiration to strike. But then again,
it's also a lot, lot better....
RWW Taylor
National Technical Institute for the Deaf
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester NY 14623
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