The Glade 4.0

http://education.ti.com/educationportal ... html?bid=1

Wow! Never though I'd see this in my lifetime. We're living in the future guys.

I'm surprised it took so long.

If by the future, you mean 2003, then yes we're finally there. That said, what the **** does a graphing calculator need a color screen for? The only time they actually get used to draw graphs is in high school math classes.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

perhaps they were inspired by this?

This.

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The Dude abides.

We actually used graphing calculators for graphing in college.
Also, the colored screens are not necessary, but considering that many profs are going to make them a requirement on the supply list, TI actually made a smart business move.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

http://www.stlcc.edu/Courses/Index.asp?subject=mth&course=160A
http://www.umsl.edu/bulletin/as/math_courses.html (MTH 1020)

I realize you did not attend either school, but a lot of schools do have graphing calculator variants for their algebra courses. (I'm not as familiar with the UMSL course, as I don't deal with math below calculus over there). I don't have statisics for UMSL, but at the community college, the graphing calculator course accounts for <5% of college algebra courses offered in a semester. A lot of the use of graphs in the course are simply because a TI-83 can't perform those functions otherwise. Were the course to require a TI-89 instead, the amount of graphing the calculator is used for would drop significantly. The decision to use a TI-83 saves the student money, especially since the graphing calculator variant is a terminal math course and most students will never touch that calculator again after the class is done.

So, my original statement stands.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

You mostly need to graph things if your calculator can't support solving symbolic equations.

I can appreciate why a calculator might have a full color screen now. The black and white display looks sort of stone age by today's standard. It's a pointless waste of battery life, though. The color-coding is most useful for 3D graphing and complex analysis. Unfortunately, that calculator lacks a lot of the other functionality associated with both topics. It's just a TI-89 with a color screen. It doesn't have a del operator. It can't do integral transforms. It might be able to do z-mapping. I've never looked.

My real beef with the graphing calculators now is that they are far less powerful machines than the smart phones that many people are carrying around in their pockets. I have a scientific calculator that I use for pretty much everything but calculus operations (it can perform definite integrals and derivatives). With Wolfram Alpha on an iPad, I now see little need for my TI-89, and I'm less than impressed with the Wolfram Alpha app. (Admittedly, I was expecting the functionality of their full-blown CAS).

Computers and smart phones still have not replaced the convenience of a good pocket calculator. (TI makes shitty scientific calculators, by the way). The scientific calculators are now good enough that graphers are becoming obsolete. That middle ground between a pocket calculator and a computer is vanishing. Their only business model left is, "Well, high schools can't make students go buy an iPhone, but they can make their parents shell out $150 for a calculator."

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Graphing calculators will stick as long as standardized tests are tied to the same models.

I believe I covered that in my last sentence.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Unless my eyes are rebelling against me, you didn't specifically mention standardized testing. In my school that was a major reason why students would get a Ti-83+ instead of a more advanced calculator.