Graphing Calculator---worth it?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>I plan on majoring in either computer engineering or electrical engineering (have yet to take any related classes, so we'll see how long that lasts) and my calculus 1 teacher recommends that we have a ti-83 or 84 (made it through precalc with a B without it), but said that we can NOT use something "high-powered" like the ti-89. </p>

<p>So I was wondering:
1) Is it worth the money to get a 83plus or 84plus?
2) Which one would suffice for engineering? I looked at the comparison chart on TI's website and it says that the more costly calculators are "for engineering"...
3) Should I get the 84plus silver edition, since it has more RAM?
4) Do higher math classes require the more higher powered calculators? So should I just wait and spend the money on the "better ones" in the future? I read somewhere that I'm better off just downloading a free graphing program or virtual calculator, but obviously that won't help me on a test.</p>

<p>Right now I'm using a Casio fx-115ES w/ natural display.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance!</p>

2

<p>At my school, it isn’t worth it to have it. For math courses, you can’t use calculators at all and in engineering, all we end up using calculators for are like plugging and chugging formulas and root finding and sometimes solving matrices, though usually they are small enough you can do them by hand. I really doubt you need anything more than something that can plug and chug things when you are given an equation.</p>

3

<p>I found a graphing calculator to be useful moreso than a standard four function since I could write certain values to memory, do more complication equations, and see exactly what I wrote. The graphing function really wasn’t that useful, since if I needed any real graphing done there was Maple, Matlab, or Mathematica.</p>

4

<p>See my answer on Physics Forums.</p>

5

<p>^Did you mean to link something?</p>

<p>I’ve always found graphing calculators very useful for calculus-related work. The TI-89’s differentiation, integration, and solving capabilities definitely came in useful when practicing problems or doing homework. I barely ever used it to graph things. But nowadays there’s WolframAlpha.</p>

<p>I don’t think the TI-83/84 are really that useful. You could probably get by with what you have.</p>

6

<p>Thanks everyone for the quick responses! Yea it seems like I better just hold off.</p>

7

<p>I think my son used his to write a program to solve 4x4 rubiks cube… but he didn’t think of it as programming (it was just a funny summer diversion).</p>

8

<p>…Pre-calc? … for $60-90 used to use for Cal 1-3 is freaking worth every penny. Who the heck is going to know what sin(29 degrees) is let alone integrate x^3+(e^x)-1 from 1 to 4? I mean that’s just making stuff up… but you’ll graph in Cal I and 2 and find area under the curve (i.e. curve line y = cos(2x)-x^3… or volume of “curve” when rotating about y-axis x-axis or a point. picture that line spinning in 3d and making a solid shape then finding the volume/area.</p>

9

<p>Simple answer: yes. More than worth its cost.
Go for the 84 because it has a lot of nice features, such as pretty print support.</p>

10

<p>No. Went through Calc 1-3 with paper and pencil. I have a HP 50g and as a junior I’m just getting into stuff that I might want to use my calculator for. </p>

<p>Get a TI-36x pro for 20 bucks and you are golden.</p>

11

<p>Call me a jerk, but I am very skeptical of the mathematical skills and understanding of somebody who needed a calculator for calculus.</p>

12

<p>@Sobe If you couldn’t do that without a calculator, there is something wrong</p>

13

<p>If you’re in a lab pressed for time the uber calculators come in handy… But generally speaking you should know how to do it longhand.</p>

<p>Spend the money on the TI Nspire with symbolic stuff if for personal use ie not during tests.</p>

14

<p>Look on Craigslist. I have purchased 2 TI 84’s there- 1 for $10 and 1 for $30.</p>

15

<p>Eh?..I am not too fond of using graphing calculators at the undergrad level. Grad school?..yeah, because at that point the focus of a graduate engineering course is not the math…it’s your modeling and applications skills.</p>

<p>ON TOP OF THAT…you make a small mistake by hand on a problem and it may not affect your hand-drawn graph as much (can get good partial credit).</p>

<p>You make a small mistake on input with that graphing calculator and that answer/graph is SCREWED…and you will probably get close to no partial credit.</p>

16

<p>I teach this stuff. I say, without hesitation, get a graphing calculator. I use a TI-83+ because I’ve owned it (a few of them, actually, because my kids have needed them, too) since before there were TI-84s. The 84 is a little nicer, and if I were buying a new one today, I would pay more to get an 84, but, personally, I wouldn’t pay any more for more RAM. I have no idea what use I’d make of more RAM. But if money is tight, get a second-hand TI-83; it’s what I use to teach precalc and calculus.</p>

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<p>I have some sympathy for the thinking that I believe underlies these statements, but I don’t agree with the conclusions.</p>

<p>It is true that there are lots of students who try to get through calculus–especially integral calculus–relying on the ability of their calculators to take derivatives and to compute definite integrals, and these students are shooting themselves in their feet. If you can’t find the derivative of a function (at least, a reasonably simple and straightforward function) at a point, or find the area under a curve (at least, certain curves) with paper and pencil, then you can’t do calculus.</p>

<p>But any calculus class that’s taught well nowadays will assume that students have the technical tools that allow them to examine a function quickly and easily in three ways: analytically, which still requires paper and pencil, and graphically and numerically. The graphing and table features of a TI-80-something make it possible to do a graphical or numerical examination quickly and easily. Without that tool, you’ll spend hours doing what should take minutes.</p>

<p>Of course, the graphing calculator has limitations. Good teachers should help good students understand those limitations. Of course, lazy students can utilize the calculator to subvert a good teacher’s pedagogical intentions. When that happens, the blame should rest with the lazy students and not with the tool.</p>

<p>I would never teach Algebra I with a graphing calculator (well, I’ve done it, but I’d never do it by choice), but I’d never teach precalculus or calculus without one. And if you’re in my class where it’s assumed you have a graphing calculator, you’ll probably be significantly disadvantaged if you don’t have one. It makes me sad to read multiple students’ opinions that it’s not worth the money to have one. You can get one for less than $100 (if you buy used or shop aggressively during back-to-school season), and if these students are not getting 100 dollars’ worth of value out of their calculators, I wonder how good their teaching was.</p>

17

<p>At my school (Georgia Tech) we are pretty much never allowed to use them on any exam in any class. It’s a really important skill to be able to see functions and graph/visualize them yourself, and getting used to using a calculator to do it will hurt your learning in the long run.</p>

<p>If you do have a class (like a calc class) that allows them, definitely get one, because you can use them to solve integrals, matrices, confirm that your hand-drawn graphs are correct, etc. That can really help you spot mistakes on an exam, but if not, you can do infinitely more with free software on a laptop, but I would strongly recommend you make it a habit to graph anything and everything by hand, including difficult polar and spherical functions. Those skills will come in handy a ton as you will be infinitely better at visualizing them. Once you get into the habit, you can graph something by hand as fast as you could type it into the calculator.</p>

18

<p>Last time I tried to use my graphing calculator in grad school I noticed my batteries had exploded. My classes were way more theoretical and required hardly any actual numbers. :frowning: For actual research stuff, bigger guns than a TI-83 were always required.</p>

19

<p>You shouldn’t have to rely on or use a graphing calculator to do the math and in fact its not even needed BUT what is nice about having say the Ti-89 is that you can use it to check your answers. Then, if you get it wrong you can easily break down the whole problem step by step and see where you fudged before handing in the test.</p>

20

<p>I heard graphing calculators are banned in most if not all engineering schools/ programs?</p>