Survey posted 2004-11-10 19:22 by Jon.

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Algebra and programming, but mainly algebra. Remember that fake news article about Joey being in the 'Al-gebra' terrorist group? 120d\!

The funny thing is that the full phrase, "al-jabr al-muqabala," means something like "restoring and balancing" in Arabic, which sounds like a vaguely appropriate motto for a terrorist group.

Hey cmon why else would i use my calculator! of course i use it mainly for programming!!! i do use it for my math class, a wee bit for science, and i actually use the organize app for the 83+ since its pretty simple to keep everything i do on my calc. yea but definently prgramming, although i'm learning ASM right now, but BASIC programs to piss off my friends is always fun!!!

Originally, I bought a Casio color graphic calculator for math purposes. I started up in BASIC then, and would program in stuff on the calculator. Later on, I found out that the TI series had assembler code as an option (be it through a loop-hole (85) or otherwise) and bought me an 86. Sometime later, the 89 came out and I traded my 86 in for an 89 and ever since then I haven't used the calculator for math. :) I just program away on it, program and game. Of course, through the years, that 89 has been used for "unofficial" help during tests and the like, hehe. Wonder if people buy TI's for "aid" in school? ;)

I would say that my V200 is "aid" in school (albeit the legal kind.) It is pretty nice to be able to graph moment and shear curves and also do the integration on the calc to double-check answers during an exam.

Having periodic tables and chem apps is a reference asset in Organic.

And of course, the CAS and 3D graphing is invaluable in Calc III. I converted my laptop to Linux and have not gotten an install key from Wolfram to install Mathematica on the Linux partition and I dislike booting into Windows :( . So, the V200 does a bunch of triple-integral-crunching. It does a good job but eats a dozen good AAA betteries every semester.

Rechargeables. After I killed a set in a week, I forever scorned alkalines.

I use my v200 for programming, gaming, and writing a novel, and my 83+ for math and graphing.

Anyone know how to do vectors on the v200?

Writing a novel? Wow! The most I ever typed on-calc was maybe a 500 word essay or two.

Vectors on the V200, I assume, are like on the TI-92+. [x,y] or [x,y,z] is a vector. There are the functions dot, norm, cross, & unitV for doing the respective operations.

I never wrote a novel, but I do write a LOT in the text editor. I've made plenty of >10K text files in the past. It's great for when you're bored. I also use my TI-89 as a fancy means of passing notes in class. If a teacher comes to see what's going on, either me or my friend will quickly hit the "HOME" button and show the teacher that I'm "helping him with a problem" or something like that. Try it, it's fun :-P

I was bored for a week without a comp once and started writing a novel. I got it up to 25K, decided I didn't like a bunch of it, got it down to about 10K by deleting most of it, rewrote what I had done and added more, and ended with just over 30K. Then I finally got access to a comp to put it on...I sent it to the comp, copied and pasted into word, and told it to change ": " to "" to get rid of the first part of every new line...why do the 89's do that for text files anyway? I understand why it's needed for programming, but you'd think they could display the : part but not actually include it in the text file. Anyway, I've been (very slowly) working on the story on the comp with a QWERTY keyboard since then...I don't think I remember the 89 keyboard well enough to do that again anytime soon.

If I'm not mistaken, the colons actually aren't part of the text file. They're just displayed. And when you send them to the computer, they're "displayed" there, in the same way. Try looking at a text file with Command Post... I could be wrong, but I know I did this once, and I'm pretty sure the colons aren't part of the file. *Shrug* If they were, it would be a huge waste of space.

I think the glyph that looks like a colon in text/program files on at least the TI-86 has a different character code from a "real" colon. When it's printed it does essentially newline + carriage return + "colon". It's used where a newline normally goes in regular ASCII files. I discovered it while displaying weird strings (TI-85 programs, IIRC) on my calculator.

As for why text files from the calculators have colons in them, I'm guessing it's because the TI-Graph Link/TI-Connect program converts those single characters to a "CR LF ':'" sequence when it transfers the file.

That's what I was trying to say, thanks :)

I keep tons of large text files on my calc with equations/math info/etc. REALLY helps in math and physics...

>>I never wrote a novel, but I do write a LOT in the text editor.

I write a lot on my TI-89Ti in much the same ways. However, I actually find NoteFolio to be much better, with automatic archiving, grouping, no colons starting lines, etc. It's much better than almost any organizer, too. What else can organize, keep notes on meetings, track baseball stats, etc., and keep it all safe from runaway ASM programs, while being extremely portable?

But the files take up alot of memory after a while and can hold only so much...

Yeah... I write in Notefolio, too.

Novel = 24k, so far.

What are the "dot, norm, cross, & unitV" functions, and how do you use them?

The notation [x,y] seems to smack of matrices. Am I right? How do you specify the direction?

Sorry about the questions, but the v200 manual is app-centric, and doesn't even mention how to add.

You can download the manuals for the other calculators, such as the TI-92+, which is similar enough to the V200 for most purposes.

See the Web Page for a link to the TI-92 Plus Guidebooks on the Texas Instruments website.

Following the customs of linear algebra, vectors and matricies are extremely closely linked already. It's actually quite fitting that the same notation can be used to define either entity.

'Define the direction'? Not too sure what you mean by that. If you enter [a,b,c] you get a 3-d row vector with x-coord 'a', y-coord 'b' and z-coord 'c'. If you enter [[a,b,c]] you get the same vector. If you enter [[a][b][c]] you get a 3-d column vector with (x,y,z) = (a,b,c). Either way, it is still a vector that the TI68k can use. But, you shouldn't mix row and column vectors in a single vector operation. Use the Transpose function where necessary.

Where is the Transpose function, you ask? Inside the Math menu, Matrix submenu. Or, check the catalog.

The dot product is called by
dotP(vect1, vect2)

The cross product (only works for vectors of 3 dimensions or less) is
crossP(vect1, vect2)

The norm of a vector is calculated by
norm(vect)

The unit vector is calculated by
vect/norm(vect)
or by
unitV(vect)

Or do you mean, what do these functions mean? If you don't know what a dot product is, then you probably don't need to care about how the TI68k treats them, so the post would be a little pointless, wouldn't it?

Anyway, all of the vector-specific operations are available from the Vector sub-sub-menu of the Matrix sub-menu of the Math menu. Many of the other matrix operations in the Matrix menu will also work with vectors. Of special interest, once you start working in linear algebra, is the ability to extract rows or columns from larger matricies, and treat them a vectors!