Relative to other graphing calculators, I've always felt that Casio's offerings were a good value relative to TI- ever since TI captured the education market they stopped being cool and definitely stopped being a good value. I think that having Python is a neat feature. I have strong opinions about calculators in general, and have owned a wide range of Casio, HP, TI, and even some old/niche ones that only real calculator nerds will recognize (like the Sinclair Cambridge and Elektronika Mk52).
With that said, we really need to let calculators go- collectors can still get excited for them, but they are a waste of money at schools. You know what else can do calculations? The smartphones and computers that practically every student has access to. There may be some really poor communities where we can't assume that a student has access to a computer and it's either a $5 calculator or nothing. But other than those really poor communities, nobody spends ~$100 on a calculator without alread having access to a more powerful computer. Smartphone penetration is high even in "kind of poor" communities where most people don't own a computer. Learning Python on a calculator is less transferable than learning Python on anything else. You can get a Python environment on Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, every flavor of Linux, and probably a dozen other things that I don't know about. Don't buy this calculator for any educational reason, buy it because you're the calculator equivalent of a sneakerhead.
Graphing calculators solve a couple of problems: they are fairly standardized, equally capable, have a known cost, run a long while on AA batteries and probably most import they don't get on the internet.
Phones, while more than computationally capable, aren't equally capable, have a battery life measured in hours, have access to the internet, and require software of an unknown cost and quality.
I agree completely. I am completely willing to spend real money on an iOS app that is as intuitive and powerful as a TI-89 but it just doesn’t seem to exist.
When I studied at a university, only calculators were allowed to perform some exams. Most of them can't run other software, and it's hard to cheat by using them.
When using a phone, you can install a lot of things.
Math olympiads only allow specific models of calculators for the same reason.
Casio calculators also have a seperate exam mode where they clear all memory and do not allow the user to get to advanced function such as programming or derivative guessers. On the newer models a special led light on the top would indicate if the calculator is in this mode. You can disable this mode only by plugging in a usb cable and connect it to a pc or other calculator.
On all dutch state exams they simply checked this light on my calculator. But a friend of mine showed me already that there exsics special firmware that can fake this light so yhea 100% security will never exist.
Not sure when you studied at university, but you can take a calculator like a TI-83/84/89 and plug in a bunch of text onto a stored program, essentially a free notes field. It's tedious to do but doesn't take too long. And unless the teacher is paying close attention, it's hard to spot.
I recall in high school teachers would actually go over and look through or reset your calculator if they thought you were spending too much time looking at it.
I think your position is unrealistic for an education setting. You’re proposing working computers and smartphones for every desk and student.
Computers and apps are not standardised at all. Disparity between them and compatibility issues are a massive contention when you have lots of people to educate. Not only that, even today here in the UK, not every student has a smartphone or a home computer so you’re instantly discriminating against them. The answer? Grab a standard calculator out of a box that everyone else has and loan it to them.
All students need a calculator for other subjects as well. In science, technology and geography they use them too.
And you can’t realistically control the configuration of a computer or smartphone in an exam.
My professor at the University used to let me use an HP Prime emulator on my laptop for tests, and to some of my peers, they would be allowed to use HP Prime emulators on their phones, it's really difficult to cheat on the kinds of tests where you need these calculators, you can't simply copy your classmate's answer and be done with it, you need procedure to back that up.
And it was $15 the emulator app by hp was worth vs $150 for the actual calculator, and I would never use that calculator again in my life, since in real life no one is limiting my access to my computer, which does everything the HP Prime does and more. I thank my professor for that opportunity
Every kid at my children's school have a Chromebook. The exact same model. Calculators are really relics of a bygone era and it is time education realizes there is greater value in embracing better tech than trying to stop a bogeyman.
While students may need a calculator, I don't think they need a graphing calculator. It seems a silly expense when they already have a smartphone. At high school in the UK in 1990s we were expected to buy our own calculators. Only primary school had boxes of (non-scientific) calculators.
I bought a graphing calculator for A-level maths, but only needed the graphing functionality a handful of times. At university graphing calculators were banned in exams. Only the basic scientific FX-82 was allowed (which cost about £15 IIRC.)
>And you can’t realistically control the configuration of a computer or smartphone in an exam.
And why should you? This isn't the 1860s when exams were being invented. We shouldn't try and copy the conditions that were accidental at the time for all eternity. If someone can cram their phone with a program that answers their exams for them they should be commended for good preparation and we should find another way of measuring peoples knowledge.
You are saying that there exists a segment of the college student population that will spend 100$ on a scientific calculator but does not own a smartphone?
Yes. Plenty. Also not many people pay $100. There’s a thriving second hand market for much less.
When the TI83 was the calculator I’d actually buy 100 or so for low price at start of summer (large surplus), spend two weeks clean and refurb and then sell them again for 3x the amount at the end (high demand)
In the UK, Poundland sells a scientific calculator for £1 ($1.30). It does not have advanced functionality (like graphing, programming, automatic factoring by surds and irrationals like pi, etc.) that higher-end models do, but it should be enough for most contexts.
I don't know how much things have changed in ten years but when I was in university I simply couldn't find a computer calculator software that had the same easy to use UI as my HP 40gs or even a basic Casio fx-991ES.
Sure I could fire up Matlab with the Symbolic toolbox or even Derive under wine but nothing came close to just typing in what I wanted and pressing a button. I guess it's more a matter of dedicated physical buttons and muscle memory.
For any "calculations" I definitely prefer a real calculator. The keyboard and screen layout and the fact most of functions have dedicated buttons are simply superior compared to software.
For rediculous things like running/writing Python on calculator here, I would like to use a real computer though.
>You know what else can do calculations? The smartphones and computers that practically every student has access to.
Not very well, for educational purposes.
The experience of calculating the inverse tan of a number and returning the result in degrees is beautiful on a Casio scientific calculator; not so on iPhone's default calculator (reverse Polish) or a Google search (awkward to execute at all).
It's distracting from the educational point whenever you have to first figure out how to do the calculation on a student's particular choice of app.
Caveat: I'd usually recommend a scientific calculator for most educational purposes, not a graphing calculator; Desmos.com is great for graphing.
I'm uncertain about learning Python on a calculator, then. There are potential educational advantages to having this on a calculator: I definitely think this is worth it for Casio to experiment with. I personally learned a lot on a programmable calculator. It's mobile and likely saves you from a difficult set up process and identifying and installing a suitable IDE that works consistently across student devices (I'd say repl.it does a good job in this space)
The calculators more or less have to have some kind of Python built-in to sell to high school students in some European countries, where some programming is in the curriculum and they more or less settled on Python. TI has several Python-enabled models for this reason. And NumWorks as well (a great calculator outside the old Casio-TI duopoly).
The problem with allowing phones into maths exams is they have browsers and internet connections, and can store thousands of pages of searchable reference material. The calculators allowed into exams are specifically chose because they do not have these features. My eldest is doing maths at the moment and has an fx-CG50, it also has Python but only a very stripped down subset of MicroPython with just the math and random libraries.
I never got the point of math exams that required punching in numbers into a constrained calculator interface. And while I was at school nobody enjoyed that either. (FWIW in the 90s I used a PIM database that looked like a calculator and allowed me to store formulas I was too lazy to memorize ;)) At university math no calculator is required anyways and everything can be done on paper. And when going to the supermarket with a constrained budget, you definitely don't want to stand in front of the products and summing up the items using a calculator (or smartphone for that matter) but rather use your hopefully developed numeric intuition to stay within your budget
Calculators are faster, they have real buttons. Much more reliable than hoping you hit the right area on the glass screen with your not-so-precise finger.
The biggest thing is ACT/SAT approval. If that’s what you need, check out NumWorks[0]. It works on both and is completely open source (down to the schematics).
It's source-available, not open-source. And the schematics sources are not available; but I don't think it would be very difficult to reinvent them, considering the number of parts is small.
On a lighter note, they make it very easy to hack on the calculator, it's written in C++ and in a Git repo at Github.
Granted, it’s not the entire device, but it’s more than most products will give you (none). You are correct about it actually being source-available. My mistake there.
I attended "poor" schools most of my life. Graphing calculators were provided and rarely we had homework. The irony was, once I got to college, for our calculus class we were only allowed to use a basic calculator.
> With that said, we really need to let calculators go
From what I've heard this is actually happening. Classes are done with laptops and GeoGebra (or other similar thing). On some tests only basic calculator apps are allowed.
As someone else pointed out, the benefit of calculators is the tactile feedback of the buttons. Once you know your calculator well enough, you can operate it much quicker than most people can operate a smartphone. It would probably take me 5x longer to do a complex calculation on my phone's interface - time poorly spent on an exam.
Having said that: Once I left university I use a calculator only when doing taxes.
I don't know about the current situation but about 10 year ago, the TIs with their functional setup were _multiple_ orders of magnitude more powerful than their Casio competitors. You could chain an arbitrary amount of functions. With the Casio, when there was no special mask for your purpose, you've been out of luck.
Anyway, I still use my TI-84 Plus, meanwhile virtually on my smartphone using Wabbitemu [1].
I used wabbitemu for a while, but eventually switched to python on termux. The Basic dialect on graphing calculators was pretty cool, but I think future students will get more out of Python on their calculators!
With that said, we really need to let calculators go- collectors can still get excited for them, but they are a waste of money at schools. You know what else can do calculations? The smartphones and computers that practically every student has access to. There may be some really poor communities where we can't assume that a student has access to a computer and it's either a $5 calculator or nothing. But other than those really poor communities, nobody spends ~$100 on a calculator without alread having access to a more powerful computer. Smartphone penetration is high even in "kind of poor" communities where most people don't own a computer. Learning Python on a calculator is less transferable than learning Python on anything else. You can get a Python environment on Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, every flavor of Linux, and probably a dozen other things that I don't know about. Don't buy this calculator for any educational reason, buy it because you're the calculator equivalent of a sneakerhead.