<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Sep 27, 2009, at 19:38 , Charles Cossé wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">Hi, this has probably been discussed to death already, but maybe not: The point at which fancy graphing calculators become "necessary" (ie as in one's student career) is the point at which the calculator should be abandoned and Python employed. Just a thought ... delete at will !<br></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Just a month ago, a friend of mine who homeschools her children was asking me about graphing calculators. Apparently the math curriculum she uses has a number of graphic calculator exercises. My advice was to buy a nice solar-powered scientific calculator (for $15 at Target), but to ignore the graphing calculator entirely. Her kids should do the exercises by hand, on graph paper instead. Anything that is hard enough for you to use a graphic calculator can be done much more easily with a computer. </div><div><br></div><div>After giving her this advice (which I still stand by), I was thinking about my own experience. I was going through high school when the first graphic calculators came out, and I had one Junior and Senior year and through college. I loved to program it, and I loved the big screen where I could see and edit expressions. However, as I think about it, I can not think of a single problem where I *needed* the graphic calculator, or where it gave me more insight than I could do by hand. It was a fun toy, but not the best tool.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>bb</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Monaco; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div>-- </div><div>Brian Blais</div><div><a href="mailto:bblais@bryant.edu">bblais@bryant.edu</a></div><div><a href="http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais">http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais</a></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span> </div><br></body></html>