"There are programs that even dictate which TI model is accepted."
At this point in 2019, with such cheap computation, the school calculator lines are being sold as much on what they don't do as what they do.
Around 1994 or 1995, I had an HP-48G calculator, a real scientific programmable calculator meant for engineers and scientists, where the rest of the class had the TI line of school calculators. The HP-48G could do most of the integration problems we had, symbolically. IIRC, there were a few high school integration problems it couldn't do, but it did a pretty good job. And it was a bottom-of-the-line, stuck on an embedded system computer algebra system even at the time. It only goes up from there.
You don't want the students to be rolling into the SATs with computer algebra systems that can solve all the problems on the exam. This is also why they can't, for instance, bring in an Android system running the TI in emulation; it's not about doing what the TI calculator can do, it's about not being able to reach Wolfram Alpha.
The model restrictions are about the test authors being sure they know what's up.
(On the plus side, if you want to teach students how to use computers well, leave them a loophole where they can bring in their android phones, install a linux app, run Sage[1] from within that, and figure out how to use it to solve their high school calculus problems. You will learn something students, one way or another!)
I started using an HP-48G too in the last year of primary school. When my secondary school forbade graphical calculators, I switched to a HP-15C that my dad had bought for his PhD in the early 80s. Fellow students used to make fun of RPN, a calculator without = sign was mindblowing for them.
I finished the university entrance math test in 12 min. This was mid 2000s. Lots of nasty calculations. Graphical calculators were banned too. They naively thought non-graphical calculators can't do numerical linear algebra or analysis. But a 15C is one of a kind. Second hand units are still crazy expensive.
I used a TI-89 (which has a CAS) on the AP Calculus exam. I maybe used it to double check an answer, but I don't remember it being more useful than a TI-83 on that exam. You can only use calculators on part of the exam. On the calculator portion, I remember formulating each problem to be the hard part and the actual differentiation/integration was straightforward.
The SAT math is so rudimentary that it's difficult to use a calculator beyond its basic arithmetic functionality (unless it's been changed since I took it). I bet most people would get similar scores with and without calculators.
In college, calculators were never allowed in exams. They just constructed each exam problem so that you didn't need to perform arithmetic with large numbers. It does make it seem like exams were written to sell calculators...
I find the 89 to be a huge leap over the 83 entirely because of the screen UX.
On the 89 it would draw the actual fractions and show exponents in superscript rather than only using parenthesis. You could also scroll up to previous entries and bring them back to the editor (or get previous answers).
The mistakes you avoid from not having to count parenthesis and being able to easily access previously typed equations was really helpful.
> On the calculator portion, I remember formulating each problem to be the hard part and the actual differentiation/integration was straightforward.
The hard part was by far typing complicated expressions into the stupid TI-83, navigating its terrible menu system, getting it to output what it was supposed to, and figuring out what was printed on the screen.
Coming up with the expressions to type took only a tiny fraction of the time of actually punching it in.
What a tremendous waste of students’ time and attention. Might just as well test emoji typing speed.
Funny, that was never my impression of the TI-83. In each menu, every item is numbered, and you can just hit the number to enter the corresponding item. I don't think there's anything that requires more than 5 button presses, and most of the common things can be gotten in 3.
At this point in 2019, with such cheap computation, the school calculator lines are being sold as much on what they don't do as what they do.
Around 1994 or 1995, I had an HP-48G calculator, a real scientific programmable calculator meant for engineers and scientists, where the rest of the class had the TI line of school calculators. The HP-48G could do most of the integration problems we had, symbolically. IIRC, there were a few high school integration problems it couldn't do, but it did a pretty good job. And it was a bottom-of-the-line, stuck on an embedded system computer algebra system even at the time. It only goes up from there.
You don't want the students to be rolling into the SATs with computer algebra systems that can solve all the problems on the exam. This is also why they can't, for instance, bring in an Android system running the TI in emulation; it's not about doing what the TI calculator can do, it's about not being able to reach Wolfram Alpha.
The model restrictions are about the test authors being sure they know what's up.
(On the plus side, if you want to teach students how to use computers well, leave them a loophole where they can bring in their android phones, install a linux app, run Sage[1] from within that, and figure out how to use it to solve their high school calculus problems. You will learn something students, one way or another!)
[1]: http://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/calculus/sage/symb...