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Comment by therealrootuser | Hacker News Reader

There was the little known, but powerful combo called "GROUP" and "ARCHIVE". GROUP allowed you to package together a set of programs. Archive would allow you to take that group and store it in the long term memory of the calculator. You can then "clear the memory" of the calculator, but can then immediately unarchive the grouped programs and get everything back how it was.

That said, I don't recall my teachers ever getting too fussy about having us clear our memory; in fact, iirc one of them actually told us to write programs to handle some of the nastier formulas.

Anyway, in my opinion, a good mathematics course should focus less on regurgitation of formulas, and more on problems solving---recognizing which theorems or strategies might apply to a problem and applying them to come up with a result.

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Plus you probably learn more coding the algorithm into a calculator than you would learn regurgitating something from memory. That's a win either way.

Yes. For those that actually write the algorithm. For every other student in the class, copying someone else's code doesn't quite have the same benefit.... Students are humans. They will find the path of least resistance...

That was how I justified it to myself when I did this and ran a fake memory cleared / program hiding program on my 83. Sorry not sorry.

You're measured on test scores, not on how much you learned.

If the rules say 'no computer assistance', and you break those rules in a way the test monitors didn't expect, the only people you are cheating are other students.

Back in Algebra 1 my teacher had a policy that you were allowed to use any program that you wrote yourself. More teachers should do that, though it'd get challenging to enforce if it weren't just the one or two nerdy kids taking you up on it.

One of my grad school math classes in differential geometry had a week-long take-home test. I requested to turn in a set of python scripts (i think this was juuuust before notebooks became A Thing), which the prof was happy to accept. The test problems effectively became test cases. I learned a ton.

As a competitive chess player I have sometimes fantasised that there should be a rule allowing computer assistance providing you wrote the chess engine yourself. I've written a simple engine to complement my chess GUI but such a rule would definitely push me to massively improve it.

It should be fairly easy to setup a parallel Lichess (or whatever it is you use) account and compare Elo ratings?

Sorry I don't understand this comment. In case it's not clear I was talking about classical, over the board chess.

There would be no difference other than acting it out on a physical board (as well).

True, but I still don't get what grandparent was talking about. Comparing Elo ratings of what why?

Of your account that plays with the aid of a chess engine and the one where you play unaided.

Oh okay, right. Well yes hypothetically if there was such a rule, yes you could do that. But there never will be such a rule so I have never and will never play with computer assistance. On Lichess or over the board or anywhere else. And even hypothetically I am not sure what the point would be of proceeding as you suggest. Obviously I would be better with the computer assistance and have a higher Elo. But only once I got my engine up to be much stronger than me (otherwise there'd be no point in bothering).

I remember writing programs for my TI-85, and I learned those formulas better than if I'd just memorized them for the test. I don't think our teachers had any rules about this stuff, and they probably didn't even know it was possible.

I think the bigger "loophole" is the ability to quickly solve simultaneous and and quadratic equations very easily using built-in functions on the calculators. This saves real time on tests like the SAT, because all you have to do is reorganize the equation to be in the right order, then tap in the coefficients to get the answer.

The TI-89 is definitely not fair in a calculus class because it can solve most of the problems for you

Back when I was in calc, you actually had to show your work, so a calculator was pointless.

Still helpful to have a calculator verify your answers even if you have to solve the problems yourself

It's much easier to reverse engineer the right steps once you know the correct answer.

I was in HS in the early 2000s and graphing calculator programs were advanced enough to show you the work on the way to the answer. You'd just copy the steps onto paper. Especially useful for blitzing homework.

Those calculators were much more expensive than the already crazy expensive TI-84 that I had. When I got to college/calculus and actually started struggling with math a bit, I learned how to use the ability of calculators to check work or solve the end product to re-derive a method or otherwise help guide me. It didn't always work, but once or twice it was the key to helping me get an answer and process

I found a program like this about 6 months into my 8 month B.C. Calc class. I blame the discovery on my mediocre B.C. exam score, as while I knew how to do everything I was pretty slow at remembering how with my assigned calculator.

You check your work with the calculator in the extra time after you're done with the test.

I get away using a smartphone (without internet access) during a translation test because dictionary was allowed and I’d wrote the dictionary software myself.

nyway, in my opinion, a good mathematics course should focus less on regurgitation of formulas, and more on problems solving

Really depends on the goal of the course. I agree a lot of courses I took focused too much on memorizing equations, but if you haven't committed something to memory, odds are you won't recognize new problems it can be used to solve. So, yea, 99% of everything you memorize will be worthless, but the problem is predicting which 1% will be useful in the future.

Lol In the 90s the venerable ti82, 83, 85 just had battery backed ram. No long term memory.

Get off my lawn.

Note that they didn't say a version number. The TI-83 Plus most definitely did have long-term ("archive") memory. I even still have mine in working order.

I am aware of that. The “get off my lawn” is a reference to the fact that those of us who are older would not have had access to such modern conveniences as flash memory in high school, and that the poster is too young to be aware of TI calculators that didn’t have this feature.

Anyway I used an HP48GX throughout high school (carrying a TI83 only if absolutely necessary). The HP had a pretty much universal following in France.

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