Survey posted 2001-03-29 02:11 by Andy Selle.

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1000 AD Abacus in China leads to less intelligent scholars

1960 AD Slide rule in USA leads to less intelligent students

2001 AD Deluxe multifunctional 83+, 89, etc. in the hands of a student in algebra I leads to less intelligent students

Comments to be taken with a grain of salt 

ROFL

What's ? :P

 = a smiley face in msword

:)

you have to be smart enough to use a calculator.

i know lots of people that know how to use a slide rule and they know absolutely diddly squat about using a graphing calculator!!!

in my opinion being able to use a computer or any other technological divice(other that for games and checking e-mail)is a sign of higher intellagence.

but, if they can only do a small amount of things with such device, then they have a harder time understanding it.

Calculators destroy MOST people's minds. MOST. Some people (most of us on this site) use their calc as a tool and not a crutch, but some people do not.
In my sophomore and junior math classes, we were taught with high empasis on the TI-92, and nobody learned a damned thing!
Now that I'm in college with no TI Calc, I have learned allll the ins and outs of Calc in my mind!
Here's to Calcs as a tool and not a crutch!
~Shane
P.S. Since I actually got a comment in early this time, I call for a TI vs. PDA survey, since thats what most of these are degrading to nowadays...

I'll be the first to admit my calculator does a lot of my work for me. It has probably salvaged my grades more times than I can remember. I don't see what's wrong with that at all. Not everyone is some math fanatic who wants to actually learn this stuff. I despise all higher levels of math and just want to get through with a decent grade so I can focus on things that really matter to me. Math is just something to torture me during my school career. Calculators forever!!%

Most people do end up using their calculator as a crutch, not a tool, and I will admit that when I got my ti89, I mostly used it as a crutch.

All throughout pre-calculus, I did somewhat poorly on tests (C's to low B's). This was because I relied on the 89's built in capabilities to do the test for me. We were required to show the process behind the answer, which I could do mostly, but in the end, I always skipped a thing or two and pulled the answer off the 89. Towards the end of the year, I used my 89 to better understand alot of the basics (like finding common denominators, which I did by closely examining the original equations against the simplified ones, and taking note of what moved where, and drew conclusions about what operations were performed, you get the idea). In this manner, my 89 became a much better teacher than my Algerbra 2 teacher. I could explore the problems I couldn't understand before by working backwards from the answer, figuring out what the calculator did where and I really started enjoying math. My Algerbra2 teacher used the "drill it into your head" method, which works for memorization I grant, but not so well for understanding math concepts.
More often than not, the "drills" became nothing more than "copy what you see on the board/overhead" and I would never give my notes a second thought. With my 89 however, I had to think about what the calculator was doing to give me the answer, whereas my teacher simply showed us the process and we were supposed to understand by looking at it and writing it down.

Now I make straight 100's in calculus and most all of my friends envy my mathematical prowess. If students would only learn from the beginning to think about what they are doing instead of just copying things down or punching the right buttons, they will use calculators as tools instead of crutches.

I am a junior in high school, have taught myself calculus, and the _freshmen_ in my _high_ school are getting TI-92+s, but the calculus students, who could actually learn something with them, are not allowed to touch them. The school justified it by saying "Oh look at the geometry application. Freshmen can use that and calculus students can't." Like the freshmen can use the symbolic differentiation and integration. I say let them do it the way I did it: on paper. Most of them probably do not know it, but it is very easy to input an angle and have it bisect it for you graphicly.

I happened to be in favor with the department head and I was on the Enginering team, so I got to use one for a while. It was then I realized that, hey, this thing would be so useful in a calculus class. Why won't they let us use it?

Rant rant rant...

Yes, because students don't learn the processes, just the syntaxes. I make it a rule to only use my calc to check my work on assignments; however, on tests and timed stuff like contests I use it for the original problem. Despite that, I still learn the processes.

BTW: The next survey should be PC vs. Macs. PC's rule, Macs suck and can't have any hardware upgrades. It would be interesting to see how many people respond to the stupid side.

ugg dun bring that up again.. last time we did i swore that people brought in other people just to comment on it.. lol i bet most of the people brought in didnt even know what this site was about.. someone was putting down there computer... lol

Do I detect the smallest hint of bias in your statement?

Could it be that you've probably never used a mac?

Could it be that I've seen this topic before (perhaps in the last survey?)

Could it be that the only "stupid side" is those who just say "________ sucks" and don't back it up?

Could it be that this is a wee bit off topic?

These are rhetorical questions, by the way.

Back to the topic:

While it's true that the TI-89 can do almost anything all the way up to the Calculus I level (and has enough power to allow making clones of all of the origional Nintendo games), it's also true that students can refrain from using it to cheat if they wanted.

But that's kinda the problem - most students just want to get by in math class - so they cheat a little, and don't learn.

However, a smart teacher can get around that - the teacher can prevent use of calculator on tests, or can take points off for not doing the steps in between - the calculator doesn't do those in-between steps; it simply shows the final result.

I've seen schools where the math class has its own calculators, allowing the teacher control over which calculators are used, and giving the students calculators that can do the stuff they've already learned without the chance to cheat or play games. Maybe that's the best solution, even if it is a little expensive.

The HP-49g can show the inbetween steps.
:P
Lets have a TI-89 vs. HP-49g survey!

Important Note: this is a TI calc site, not an HP one.
My gess is that the HP 49G will come out with one, maby two votes total (me, and that one other kid). The TI-89 will come out with possibly 300 to 350 votes. Pointless? Most likely. But it would be better then some other surveys that have been suggested.

My 1 1 + cents (not a mistake, just RPN)

Reverse Polish Notation is weird. I have only seen the HP 49g once, when my dad brought it home from work to show me, I was joking though, I just wanted to mention that not all calcs couldn't show the work.
Long live the TI89!!!

This is a TI site, not an 89 site, so there would also be a lot of I don't own an 89.

i would just like to say this:

the whole reason that ti calculators are so successful is because they have cash to start with and somehow got the schools to endorse there products.. i mean seriously, when i signed up for my math class, they said "you have to have a ti-83.". it wasn't "you need a capable graphing calculator." clearly, TI is giving money to them and in turn, ti has become "the standard" in the schools, and so, because they have a forced market, they can CHARGE 100 F%$#@ING BUCKS for a PIECE OF S%$#@T calculator. I dont know if any of you are aware, but a zilog z80 processor costs less than a dollar in mass. it is only 5 mhz for cryin out loud! and the ram? its tiny anyway- only 160k of EEPROM doesn't cost much at all.. i could probably buy all the parts for a calculator with a days worth of lunch money (and program a better OS myself.. :p).

ti- calculators are acually pieces of crap. Programming for them is a pathetic mess.
Total, they are worth about 5-10 bucks, and they charge 100 (for an 83-plus.)
The only reason that HP charges that much is because they have to keep up with the market that the school system has so generously given to TI.
The only reason i have a TI is because i like to program (however much of a pain it is on a TI), and you cant really share HP stuff you make because nobody else has one but like 2 kids out of 100.
If the school would quit endorsing TI so profusely, maybe the calculators that are actually powerful would emerge.

btw why dont most of you people just go get sub-laptops and play some real games.. they really aren't all that expensive..

Bias, yes. Used macs before? Unfortunately, Yes. Macs suck because hardware upgrades are almost impossible, as well as the fact that building one ground up is impossible. Also, only one company makes them, and they are only compatible with other macs. PC's, however, are made by several companies, including Dell, GateWay, Hewlett Packard, and IBM. They are mostly fully compatible, and if you don't like the deal of one company, you can simply go to another and get a better deal. Macs, that's impossible on.

In addition, Macs use a somewhat different and very annoying instruction set, making it difficult to port programs to MacOS, and most people/companies don't bother to do that anymore because of how few serious people now use Macs... so Macs have tiny software support compared to x86-based machines, and a lot of Mac software actually has to be made by Apple.

With Macs, you're limited to proprietary Apple software and hardware, with PCs you do what you want... That means get any hardware you want, install any OS you want, buy (or make) any software you want, you're not nearly as limited in your possibilities as you are with a Mac.

Wana bet on that compatability thing? There is a wonderful piece of software called Virtual PC. It lets you run Windows 95, 98, 2000, Me, NT, 3 kinds of Linux, and Unix as of the last time I checked. The emulation of windows is almost perfect and if a program crashes Windows, it does not crash MacOS.

There are some teachers at my school that don't allow the use of TI-89s on tests.

Well when you think about it...you don't really see people building their own Macs. *shrug*

I did. :)

Let's see . . . Apple (especially G4 owners?) users can upgrade memory, add new hard drive(s), put stuff in the available slots . . . it's upgradeable enough.

You average user doesn't build his/her own machine anyway. Network admins, hardware junkies and hardcore gamers, maybe, but not your average Joe.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but the G4 is 128-bit can do 4 instructions each clock cycle (theoretically up to 8, but I doubt that will happen in your average software)

What was Intel again? 32-bit, more recently 64-bit? OK, I went to the Intel webpage and found the P4 has some 128-bit instructions.

I'm still looking for anything about how many instructions per clock cycle it can do theoretically (although this can vary).
(remove spaces from adresses before using)

So what do I see? No big advantage - both have good points, both have bad points.

MHz is a bad measurement of performance; so much depends on the deeper stuff - pipelines, caches, etc. If you slowed a P4 or G4 down to 486 (pre-pentium chip) speeds, it'd still be 4 to 8 (or even more!) times faster than the 486! Today's processors do several instructions each clock cycle, and can even attempt to predict the next instruction.

My sources:

ftp://download.intel.com/pentium4/ download/netburstdetail.pdf
http://www.intel.com/pentium4/index.htm ?iid=intelhome+roll_Pentium4&

http://www.apple.com/ powermac/expansion.html
http://www.apple.com/ powermac/specs.html
http://www.apple.com/ powerbook/processor.html