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Comments like this are why hacker news is so frustrating now. It's a rant about TI calculators which doesn't address any of the points made in the article itself, yet is sitting at the top of the comments.

If you want to talk about TI calculators in general, write a blog post and post it here or something, but I don't see why this mostly-unrelated comment needs to dominate any discussion about the actual points being discussed in the article.

Sorry. Let me try to make it relevant:

(1) I think it’s great to give kids general-purpose tools for unstructured hacking. There’s enormous pedagogical value for every person in learning to think procedurally, break things down into parts, debug algorithms, and explore mathematical systems. Every teacher should read Mindstorms.

(2) General purpose computers are nowadays really great for this, if the proper programming environments get set up on them. They have awesome screens for displaying neat graphics. They have reasonable keyboards for quickly typing in code and numbers and symbols. They have amazing CPUs and GPUs which can crunch numbers like nobody’s business.

(3) I think we should start kids programming at age 5-8 with a tool like Scratch or Logo or I dunno what, but something designed and tested on children, with good sets of materials and curricula set up to teach them to do exploratory programming.

(4) I think at some point students should be given tools which give them low-level access to hardware, like I dunno an Arduino or something. These things are getting to be $20-30 now, and it’s possible to use them for all sorts of nifty stuff and learn how to operate on constrained systems and twiddle bits in memory and whatever supposed advantage a TI calculator would offer, if that’s the goal.

(5) Many people don’t use tablet computers (or other computers) in math courses in school in a very pedagogically sound way, and a lot of software used in schools is terrible. (Giving access to open-ended exploratory systems is much better than giving access to one-purpose constrained tools.) This is too bad, because big color multitouch displays are really nice input/output devices for many purposes.

(6) It’s all well and good that the original author and many other people had a nice experience programming a TI calculator as a way to stave off boredom in math class, or whatever. But TI graphing calculators were overpriced and outdated and frankly pretty crappy relative to other devices people used 10 years ago, as long as we get the right software on those devices. By now it’s just ridiculous. Making people type BASIC into a calculator using tiny buttons and a little monochrome screen is not the right way to introduce mathematics, or programming, or anything else.

The 83 calculator was rugged, had great battery life, was programmable even in the simplest of ways, and basically kicked ass at its niche--remaining useful even through senior year of mechanical engineering at my college.

I'm sorry it's not sexy and shiny, but the thing represents an excellent optimization for price, durability, speed, and utility. The fact is that the 83 is basically the AK47 of the calculator world--ugly, old, outdated, and utterly fantastic at what it sets out to do.

You seem to overlook the fact that while we've got these great general-purpose tools for doing computation, the 83 is first and foremost a graphing calculator. It handles basic statistics quite well, handles graphing and intercepts okay, and as a bonus has a very simple and robust programming interface.

Raspberry Pis and Arduinos and OLPCs are cool and all, but in terms of just giving kids the basic tools they need to solve adult problems soonest, they fail.

EDIT:

I'm not saying I think they still need to be $100 a pop--a design refresh to get them down to more modest prices wouldn't hurt, but still.

(2) General purpose computers are nowadays really great for this, if the proper programming environments get set up on them. They have awesome screens for displaying neat graphics. They have reasonable keyboards for quickly typing in code and numbers and symbols. They have amazing CPUs and GPUs which can crunch numbers like nobody’s business.

This has never really not been the case. The merits of calculator programming have always been despite (or arguably, because) of their technical inferiority.

In response to point six, TI made it so you didn't have to type out "if" or "end" over and over; there are tokens for each of those calls, and remembering the number shortcuts in the menu is fairly easy. It is painful to only be able to read seven lines of code, sixteen characters apiece, at the same time, and the scrolling is horrible, but it does a pretty good job at what it's supposed to do. And there are plenty ways to extend or change the functionality of the calculator to make it easier to use and more customisable.

Regarding your 3), I think Python would be really good for this. Then they could graduate to C and lisp.

Also, I strongly agree with your 6). A small, monochrome screen was very painful to look at on my TI-83 when I was in school. I hated it (I also programmed it, but didn't have nearly as much fun as the author..I didn't think it was that cool).

The spirit of the article is compatible with explaining the virtues of general purpose computing.

There are plenty of people who have drawn a distinction between devices that can be programmed and which encourage experimentation and creation as opposed to devices built for consuming or figuring out how to get a result within prescribed parameters.

However, it cannot be ignored that Texas Instruments graphing calculators are not great examples of general purpose computers. To the contrary, they have become a signature example of rot within education.

Students who would be sufficiently inspired to program a graphing calculator would also be sufficiently inspired to program on a Raspberry Pi which is orders of magnitude more capable, and at least $65 cheaper.

The TI-84 is BAD at its core functionality. It performs badly when it comes to acting as a mathematical tool, or as a preview of what tools students might ever potentially use professionally or in higher level math courses. Second, it is a bad general purpose computer. And finally, because it is terribly over-priced, it is unnecessary burden on high school students, at a price that is only supported by cooperation from testing agencies that acts counter to the interests of students and counter to education in general.

Is a TI graphing calculator a cute device, and does it inspire fetishization and nostalgia? Sure, why not. However, it is not acceptable that high school students in 2013 are compelled to buy technological relics that are not relevant to their education.

Hacker News patriotism is out of place here.

There's nothing in the guidelines about what constitutes legitimate top comments. Hacker News uses a democratic system, where those who choose to vote dictate what the most visible comment is.

Your expectation is narrow and doesn't reflect what the vocal majority want to see, evidently. It would appear most people appreciated his comment, in which case, who are you to dictate that should and should not be the top comment?

If you want to read salient points about the article, make an excellent comment so it will be upvoted, or scroll down and read them. They're there.

EDIT: I'd ask that if you downvote me, you at least comment on why you disagree. It's not like my opinion is just going to go away, guys.

> I'd ask that if you downvote me, you at least comment on why you disagree. It's not like my opinion is just going to go away, guys.

I guess the democratic voting system you so valiantly defended bites back.

While I agree that most graphing calculators are overpriced and too limited in functionality, I disagree that students should only be given problems that can be nicely worked out on pencil and paper.

There were occasional problems I was given in my high-school calculus class where the goal was to find the area under a curve of a function that was difficult or impossible to integrate by hand. The calculator does it numerically so we were forced to recognize which types of problems could be solved exactly and which could not. Intersections of curves can also easily be solved with a graphing calculator.

Other things like systems of linear equations, probability distributions, statistics, combinatorics, and rapid data entry and processing can also be done really easily on a graphing calculator. These are all tedious to do by hand, and all make an appearance in upper level high-school math classes.

Part of taking a math class should be learning tools to solve your problems efficiently, and exact solutions are often not the most efficient way to do that. Things like Excel, Python, and Maple are all nice but they assume access to a computer and would require significant disruption to lecture flow. With a graphing calculator it's easy for students to do these things themselves (at their desks) without having to give them each a portable computer (which causes other problems with keeping the students attentive) and teach them a programming language.

Through 6 semester courses of high school mathematics, 10–11 semester courses of college pure/applied mathematics, 5 semester courses of college physics, and lots of other numerical problem solving, I never ran into a case where punching some complicated formulas or numbers into a graphing calculator during a lecture would have been useful, and never ran into a time when I wished I had a graphing calculator instead of a regular $10 scientific calculator or a laptop. YMMV.

I guess you never took Nuclear & Particle and had to type the SEMF into a calculator :)

I have my TI-89 Titanium next to me on my desk as I speak.

I used it a lot in Applied Physics. I used it during thermo, I used it during optics lab, I used it during electronics exams, I occasionally it during Linear Algebra, I used it during Physical Chemistry. I used it a lot during undergraduate lab.

I didn't use it in senior year Classical or E&M.

Sometimes I used my laptop (when I finally bought one 2 years in) for those things, but I'd end up remotely logging into another computer on campus and punching stuff in Maple when that was the case.

It was a speed thing. It's faster (and more explicit) than a scientific calculator, and accurate for what it is.

I'm a computer engineering student. I've taken physics, thermodynamics, electronics, linear algebra, etc.

I've never had a need for a TI-89. I inherited one from my brother and I've never used it. If I'm doing anything complicated I'll just use my laptop.

Well, I can remember the coefficients of the Fourier series being a real pain to calculate...

That'd be more salient argument if graphing calculators were used outside educational environments.

With a graphing calculator it's easy for students to do these things themselves without having to give them each a portable computer

Oh, the irony...

Things I used a calculator for in high school that were great times to use a calculator:

-solving systems of equations for physics

-doing anything in AP statistics

-plotting functions in calculus so that I could visualize them

Now that I'm in college I either use Mathematica or Python's scientific stack for all of these things, but I didn't own a laptop during high school and can definitely understand why high schools would buy graphing calculators for their classes. They have a relatively high educational utility for their cost.

On the other hand, I agree that curriculum's shouldn't be catered around calculators. A good high school math curriculum would let people know what can be done numerically, what can't, and spend a small amount of time teaching people how to do the numerical things on their calculators (or whatever the tool of choice is).

I personally loved using my graphing calculator especially in classes where it was not required. Statistics and accounting, for example, were classes were we were expected to memorize formulas that I found to be difficult to learn. Come test day, though, I had programmed those formulas into a note on my TI 86.

The teachers always gave their reasons why they were forcing us to memorize these equations that in the real world we would have written down (or use software to solve for us), but I never bought into it. And they never forced me to erase my calculator's memory before the exam.

My high school roommate bought a TI calculator keyboard to efficiently type in formulas/notes before exams - probably the best investment he made.

I remember programming a basic quadratic equation solver at the end of a math exam sophomore year, because I had extra time and had already checked the test once. I didn't find any mistakes, but I wrote out the code on the back of the test and got an extra credit point :).

I'm torn, because although TI calculators are pretty undeniably a sinkhole of innovation and unnecessary to most students, I loved (still love) mine so damn much. I'd rather have them update the system and their prices (which if anything have risen on the same models since I was in high school) than get them out of schools entirely. But maybe that's just nostalgia thinking for me.

>Come test day, though, I had programmed those formulas into a note on my TI 86.

So you cheated?

Yes. I comforted myself in saying I had come up with a creative solution for problem solving and that I was justified in rebelling against the teacher who assumed everyone was a finance major. But in essence, yeah. I cheated. And I passed.

Of course memorizing not sensible. That's why we have cheat sheets and/or standardized reference booklets. Practical, and more importantly fair to all students because they all have the same material available.

Counterpoint: graphing calculators are great for entry-level programming. That is how I got started.

Since graphing calculators have a privileged place in schools, kids can play games on them during class instead of pay attention. Their TI-BASIC language is trivial to pick up (and is meant to be briefly taught in classrooms) but under-powered for games. However once you get to the point where you are limited by TI-BASIC's interpretation speed, you have a good foundation from which to learn assembly language.

My first two programming languages, learned in 6th and 7th grade respectively, were TI-BASIC (83/84 series version) and Zilog Z80 assembly.

I wouldn't be where I am right now if it were not for those overpriced and simultaneously over and under-powered devices.

It may not be strictly necessary, but it's a great educational and exploratory toy.

The main draw for me was unsupervised exploration. The calculator is simple enough that you can figure out how to program yourself (with the manual), and you can know 'everything' there is to know about it. You don't have to ask a teacher for anything, you get to do whatever interests you, and show your friends. That makes it more exciting somehow.

Like the author of the article, I (and my friends) spent a lot of time programming in BASIC on it. I also feel I spent a lot of time simply plotting functions, just to see how they behaved. EG, looking at the 'beats' produced by adding up sine functions. As a scientist today I frequently do that kind of exploratory analysis, but in python or mathematica.

I think the author's point was more that there is value in an educational tool that encourages kids to hack on it in an unsupervised, unstructured way. Of course there are better interfaces than TI. But the replacement educational tools (iPads in particular) don't really have that same freedom to hack (or at least the barrier to entry is much higher).

Throw Codea on there and it's pretty good to play with.

You can take my TI-89 from my cold, dead hands.

It is dramatically more portable than a laptop, the battery lasts forever, and you'd be surprised how powerful it is. Sure, it takes a while to learn how to use it, but once you learn how, you can perform tasks with it extremely quickly. Obviously it isn't as powerful as Mathematica or Maple, but for many things I would argue it is both easier and faster to use.

I will agree with you that older TI calculators have bad interfaces, but I think the TI-89 has an interface is quite usable and intuitive.

>Graphing calculators are entirely unnecessary for learning high school/college mathematics/physics/etc.

Maybe not necessary, but the TI-nspire I got for school was absolutely amazing. Seeing functions graphed out was very helpful. And it can quickly do stuff that is a pain to do on a regular calculator. I used it a lot in school and learned a lot with it.

The interface is a lot better too. It has a mouse, menus, color graphics, and you can just input functions how they are written.

http://education.ti.com/kbase/C21770SS7.JPG

http://mathbits.com/MathBits/TINSection/PreCalc/piece4.gif

i don't agree with you.

in school we learned two ways. there were pencil-tests and calculator-tests. the calculator tests were considerably harder, and if you forgot your calculator that day - and it happened - you were out of luck. MAYBE the teacher had one you could borrow.

learning how to use a graphing calculator is important. it teaches kids how to use a highly technical tool to solve difficult problems in a fraction of the time it would take by hand.

Then point them at a real CAS on a regular computer. As long as we're trying to teach them real-life math skills (we're talking about STEM people here, right?), a CAS is closer to what they'll need.

AP Statistics needs a graphing calculator or a computer. I think a calculator is a more realistic option. At my school, you could buy a TI-83 or TI-84, or you could check it out from the library for the year, so it didn't have to cost you anything.

No, they aren't great at everything, but being the best at everything isn't what they're designed for. What they are designed for is to be functional tools, and like all good functional tools, they are designed to be durable and reliable, relatively maintenance-free, and to do most of what people need them to do. I know a guy who's been using his TI-83 for a decade, and it still works fine. I bought mine from a pawn shop for $40 three years ago, I use it nearly every day, and it works fine. The batteries in mine last... months. Actually, I think mine might be going on a year now. They're not pretty, and they aren't going to be able to do vector calculations in 3D, but as a tool, they're actually pretty goddamn awesome. And once you learn the UI, it's not that bad at all.