Quote from MIKEHUNT;1143225:
So apparently math teachers are suppose to be advertising this as the new common graphing calculator, replacing the TI84 and TI83...
My math teacher last year encouraged everyone to get their own over the summer and my Calc AB teacher this year was making it mandatory up until over half the class objected to it on the first day of school.
So can anybody tell me if this calculator is really worth it? Only one person in my class actually got it and it seems useful to the extent that I'm slightly JELOUS but still skeptical...
As someone who competed with class members that had TI Nspires with just my handy old TI-84:
The most notable advantage of the TI NSpire is solving algebra. You can just type in as much rediculous shit as you want and it'l return it as simplified as it can do. I used to abuse this on my classmate's calculators, putting in complex functions that would make it iterate to the point of freezing their calculator.
However, this isn't really needed at the high school level and would only really start to be useful at the university level - and by then, you should have a good handle on Algebra. It's also counterproductive to actually learning something - you will never learn how to do algebra efficiantly by putting it into a calculator. To that end, I don't understand why your teacher is encouraging it.
And for most simple algebra that you'll be doing, you'll do it faster in your head then on the calculator with sufficient practise.
Now, for graphing:
Despite being labelled a graphing calculator the graphing options arn't very user friendly. It took one of my classmates quite a while to figure out how to use the graphing function, and even once you get the overall hang of it, it's much slower then using the TI-83 series. There's a lot of clunky menu options and you can graph things about twice as fast with the TI-83.
The NSpire does offer more advanced functions with graphing, such as snapping to minima and maxima and automatically discerning intersect points and dy/dx at a given point. However, once again, there is either no need for these with simple equations or it reduces your actual ability in doing so with assessment questions.
Finally is programming. I'm going to get a lot of hate for this, but the NSpire's programming is rubbish. It's slow compared to the 83/84 TI-BASIC, the language is longer, more complex, and you can't do as much with it. It's easy to pick up the 83/84 with no knowledge of programming and become decent at it. I did well in that regard, and while I wasn't the best by a long shot, I believe it's much easier then the BASIC used by the NSpire. You can write up GUIs using lists or graphing screens in 83 BASIC and doing stuff is generally a whole lot easier. Longer programs will take longer to run, but you can pretty much negate this by using ASM. Note that assembly programs take a lot longer to write and stuff, but they don't lag because it doesn't have to convert it to machine code. By manually programming things yourself, you gain a better understanding of things and it can help with those little things that you might not have time to do in an exam.
So basically, I would say that while the 83 series is older, it's superior for learning and even when compared to the NSpire in terms of functionality, it still has it's uses. However...
Quote from Yoorah:
And really, I'd recommend against using a graphing calculator at all--especially in high school. I've found that students become reliant on them and then forget how to graph functions manually, or they become less clear on visualizing functions in their minds without any help.
Keep this in mind. This is the greatest weakness of the NSpire.