is this even a calculator !

[3roomlab]

i lost touch with calculator gear since school days ...

but this really open my eyes ...

https://edu.casio.com/products/cg/cp2/

very expensive too USD199 iirc

[xrunner]

It looks like a cell phone with a contact list that has unusual friend's names like geometry and sequence. 

[Hydrawerk]

Looks nice but are these colorful calculators allowed at schools??? At my high school all graphing calculators were banned, so I had a text-only calculator. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/hp's-got-a-new-graphing-calculator/msg231865/#msg231865
Maybe professionals use these calculators when working in field??
At my university we use Matlab on PC.
EDIT: Since September 2009 i have a Casio FX-5800 P and I love it. It runs on one AAA 1,5V cell.

[Hydrawerk]

http://www.casio-intl.com/asia-mea/en/calc/survey/fxfd10pro/
Here is a new model, too.

[ajb]

It's about time.

[IanB]

Fancy calculators are obsolete. For any fancy calculator you come up with, you can write an app for a phone or tablet that emulates it and runs 100x faster for 1/100th the cost.

[radiomog]

Fancy calculators are obsolete. For any fancy calculator you come up with, you can write an app for a phone or tablet that emulates it and runs 100x faster for 1/100th the cost.

as I clicked on this link, I was going to say "go RPN, or go home"...
then I proceed to look at the one he linked.

pretty cool, maybe there is room for one of these, but as you point out, there are plenty of apps available for 'smart' phones.. probably a better market for the app then a hardware version....
but that's me, a guy out in the working world, not at school anymore... so there may be a market for them??

[c4757p]

Fancy calculators are obsolete. For any fancy calculator you come up with, you can write an app for a phone or tablet that emulates it and runs 100x faster for 1/100th the cost.

So much this. I don't want a magic wonder math machine that costs a couple hundred dollars. I already have one, I call it a "computer". I want a pocket device that's very easy to use, very quick to whip out, reasonably cheap, reliable (all my cheap - non-HP - calculators are solar-powered), and until I graduate, satisfies the common exam requirement that I use a non-programmable device.

If I have to do anything more complicated, I'll find a computer and save myself the trouble and expense.

[ajb]

Fancy calculators are obsolete. For any fancy calculator you come up with, you can write an app for a phone or tablet that emulates it and runs 100x faster for 1/100th the cost.

Problem is, how many people are actually going to take the time to write an app for their phone?  And last time I looked, there didn't seem to be an app or even set of apps that provided anything like the features or ease of use of even a fifteen year old graphing calculator.  Perhaps that's changed?

Anyway, I can see the advantages of a hand-held device with a nice large screen, a proper set of tactile keys, and a solid calculation engine with easy on- or off-device programmability.  Add wifi and a good desktop app that can seamlessly move data among the device, Excel, MATLAB, etc, and you'd have something really neat.  The question is, is there enough market share to make it worthwhile to bring such a device to market at a reasonable price?  Of course if you give up the tactile keypad, you could do all of that on a smartphone--someone just needs to create the software.

[VK5RC]

Don't encourage them,  the designers of test equipment to me are using the ubiquity of iPhones and Androids to do the final display /processing and control interface.  When in 10yrs time no one will recall what an iPhone 4 looks like,  there is  going to be a lot of useless stuff. 
Most high school  classes have only one make/model of calculator you are allowed to use. 

[EEVblog]

many people don't seem to understand what these calcs are why they are still around.
Classes don't want kids to use their phones (if they have one) and run an app that may or may not work this week for whatever technical reason.
They don't want kids being distracted by their phone secretly playing Angry Birds.
They want something they can write their class plans around and have be them valuable and usable for the next decades.
They want something that provides a rich but controlled environment.

Why do these exist? The same reason the Tek TBS1000 still exists. Teachers have or can write class plans around a single known platform that know know will still be around in decade.
The XKCD comic is funny but also fails to recognise this fact.

No one would use this once they leave school, that's not what it's for.

[c4757p]

The XKCD comic is funny but also fails to recognise this fact.

I thought the point of the xkcd comic was that they still cost so damned much when they're worth like $5-10 in parts now...

[EEVblog]

I thought the point of the xkcd comic was that they still cost so damned much when they're worth like $5-10 in parts now...

The the school's paid $xx for them 5 years ago, why wouldn't they do that again?
No need to drop prices as technology improves and Casio and TI know that. Actual calculator hardware has always costs these companies peanuts. But they put massive effort into firmware and apps etc, and that is basically what they are selling.

[c4757p]

Well of course, they'll sell them for whatever they can. But $100 is a big chunk for a lot of people - not all schools buy them, I had to buy my own.

Also it didn't have any better firmware than the ones that were nearly ten years old at the time, and most of us never used any apps on it. It was the same calculator it was before, just with a bit more memory IIRC....

To make matters worse, these low-end TI graphing calculators suck, so you're paying $100 for a complete turd...

[Mechatrommer]

Fancy calculators are obsolete. For any fancy calculator you come up with, you can write an app for a phone or tablet that emulates it and runs 100x faster for 1/100th the cost.

Problem is, how many people are actually going to take the time to write an app for their phone?  And last time I looked, there didn't seem to be an app or even set of apps that provided anything like the features or ease of use of even a fifteen year old graphing calculator.  Perhaps that's changed?

yes that changed... go to android app store, type "graphing calculator", there are numbers of them free, one from Mathlab with 3d plot paid version. Graph 89 seems to emulate old graph calculator (i havent try yet) and another related Mathway, Mathematics, Algeo Graphing etc etc.

now its the time when smartphone is as usefull as computer (except for serious work require extensive typing/gui such as word processor, programming, photoshop). not just app, it can be 3 in 1 too. a camera, handphone and mini computer, all in pocket size bring everywhere anytime 24/7. now its the time to put away ancient mentality of "blaming the tool" (gun is different story which is of no direct usefullnes other than for killing a life), blame should be put on the person who misuse it. let our children bring it to school and educate them on what should or should not be used with them. penalty should be given to the wrongdoer, not the tool. tell them to take care there belongings to avoid dissapearance, tell them, playing Angry Birds, Crush Candy or CoC is ok if you cant do anything else usefull such as when you are in a bus or train or airplane, or to release tension for a moment after heavy study, but its a wastefull thing to do when you are in the house, workplace or school.

[Maxlor]

Those CAS graphical calculators have a place on my desk. I don't have a symbolic math package on my computer (those are expensive!), so when I need to wrestle with integrals, differentials or just reform an equation when doing it on paper seems like too much a hassle, I turn to the calculator. Used to be mostly the TI-89, but I'm slowly warming up to the HP Prime thanks to its speed and display.

As for using calculators on phones, anything bigger than a scientific calculator just doesn't work for me there, because there's not enough screen space. Things become ridiculously small or cramped, or you're constantly showing and hiding panels, or need to type in function names character by character. I much prefer the physical calculator to that.

[Mechanical Menace]

The the school's paid $xx for them 5 years ago, why wouldn't they do that again?

The schools I went to tried to get parents to pay for them, so only 1 or 2 of the richest kids in the year had the calculator they were told to get. And then the next year they wanted you to get the newest model...

Most of the school never got to lay their hands on a graphing calculator, even in the lessons which were basically a sales pitch and demo of them. Always a Casio and always £200+ when bought with a discount through the school.

Cynical me, even back then, wondered how much the school got paid to do that.

[c4757p]

I don't have a symbolic math package on my computer (those are expensive!)

A personal license of Mathematica isn't totally fuck-off expensive, though it sure ain't cheap either ($300 or so); Maple can be had for a bit less. I highly recommend Maxima/wxMaxima, which is free and quite competent.

[david77]

The standard calculator at the schools around here has always been the TI-30, even back when they had the super cool bubble LED displays. The TI's were also available at a discount price through the school, but you didn't have to have that one. Every scientific calculator was deemed ok as long as it was not programmable.

For some reason I got the Casio fx-101 or something very similar, still have it somewhere.

I still prefer the real hand helc calculator over software based ones. If there's a proper calculator I'll use that. If not I'm typing calc into Windows.

[IanB]

There's definitely a place for ordinary calculators, especially in the workshop or on the workbench. Though that said, I haven't found a reason to use one in decades.

It's the fancy calculators with graphing and symbolic algebra that seem unneeded. Any time I want to do that I am near a computer and it has much better tools for such things.

For educational uses, I think they are a luxury. I went through high school before graphing calculators had been invented and we were taught how to do algebra, sketch graphs of functions and solve problems on paper. Even calculators that could do fractions were seen as "cheating".

[Dave Turner]

I remember the British Thornton slide-rule rep coming to demonstrate their double sided slide rule to us in our maths class when we were about 12 years old. Yeah we were meant to buy one for the future years in school, but only allowed to use them for certain problems. Hand held electronic calculators which became available in the early 70's were banned from the school room except for demonstration purposes and certainly not allowed in exams even if one could afford one.

Nowadays for ad hoc calculations I prefer to use a hand held calculator with real buttons rather than any touch screen based offering. I have found that, for me, touchscreens just don't have the required precision and lack appropriate touch feedback.

For anything more complex one has spreadsheets, Mathlab amongst many other offerings.

Hmm wonder if my Casio fx-8100 still works.

[helius]

When I was in secondary school/college, the graphing calculators available were slow and rather primitive. I used them, but not for graphing as it would take ages. What I did find very useful is the program I wrote (on a Casio fx-7000GA!) to find prime factors of an integer, using Eratosthenes's method. This made reducing heinous fractions a great deal easier, even when doing all of the algebra by hand.

A great limitation of those early graphing calculators, that made them pretty useless for exams, is that they do not show the intercepts of a function precisely. You could spend hours tweaking the graph parameters to get a plot that could be read with enough precision to guess the correct extrema or zeroes.

[Matje]

Fancy calculators are obsolete. For any fancy calculator you come up with, you can write an app for a phone or tablet that emulates it and runs 100x faster for 1/100th the cost.

Hmm, so you think there are apps out there properly(!) emulating a HP50g or TI-89 that cost single digits?

I don't think so.  And there are reasons for that - for starters, most app programmers wouldn't even understand what would be required, and those that do would rather buy the existing thing than tackle emulating it. Real maths software is nothing like the typical app.

[Maxlor]

Hmm, so you think there are apps out there properly(!) emulating a HP50g or TI-89 that cost single digits?

I don't think so.  And there are reasons for that - for starters, most app programmers wouldn't even understand what would be required, and those that do would rather buy the existing thing than tackle emulating it. Real maths software is nothing like the typical app.

TI-89 and HP48g emulators for Android do exist. They're just not fun to use on a phone.

I do agree with what you probably really mean, creating a useful CAS appears to be difficult, much more so than creating a scientific or even graphing calculator. It's not something any programmer can do.

[Alex Eisenhut]

Fancy calculators are obsolete. For any fancy calculator you come up with, you can write an app for a phone or tablet that emulates it and runs 100x faster for 1/100th the cost.

Ah, you appear to be laboring under the misconception that these calculators are used to calculate.

The only calculation they do is how much money is being shoveled from student loans into private hands by lobbying that a specific calculator is *required* for a certain class.

Education is a big business.