I certainly got a lot of educational value out of mine. I managed to program a fully functional Minesweeper game on mine, using the built-in programming tools - no transferring efficient binaries via cable!

But yes. 99% of what we did with them in class - when we were even allowed to use them - could have been handled by a little solar-powered calculator with basic arithmetic functions.

I sort of agree.

You're paying $100 for completely antiquated hardware where its core feature is "it doesn't do much".

Pretty much any professional environment that you will need calculations will have access to a computer that can do these calculations significantly faster and better.

I thought my HP was pretty cool in high school, but pretty much the moment I graduated I stopped using it because I figured out how to use Excel and/or a programming language to do number crunchy stuff. Even for CAS stuff, I would just use Wolfram Alpha or SageMath (depending on how ambitious I'm feeling with setting stuff up).

I can't remember the last time I used a calculator outside of showing someone else how to use it.

I learned programming on that calculator. I learned programming because of that calculator. I owe so much to that calculator.

Agreed, it's insane to me that in an era of Google Colab (et al) schools still require students to shell out >$100 for one of these. I'm sure there is some backroom arrangement with schools of some kind.

I got an HP50g from Craigslist in high school that

- was cheaper than a TI

- had a primitive CAS system

- teachers had no idea how to put it into test mode

It carried me through AP calc BC, I would’ve gotten <4 off of my own knowledge alone

I had a TI-83 in high school and upgraded to a TI-89 for college circa 2002. Used the heck out of those calculators because I did all the math and physics prerequisites for an engineering degree before switching to CS. It also helped me get a B in Linear Algebra thanks to holding a cheat sheet document for the final exam. I had no trouble with the likes of Calculus 3 and differential equations but for some reason the later material in linear algebra didn't click with me.

TI-86 is the one in my case. We had to buy it in high school, and I used it so much in high school and in university after (I still have it in a box), that it's the only calculator I've since used. I absolutely have to have a TI emulator on my phone, and have paid for multiple ones along the years.

I use my emulated TI-86 every other day, and prefer it to any other UI I've seen on calculators on phones.

When I have a laptop available, I of course use excel or wolfram alpha for anything demanding, but when on the go, I like my emulated TI-86.

30 years ago, we had the option of the TI-82 Or (83?) and the 85. A bunch of the kids with the 85 were playing Tetris and some were writing little programs. I got the cheaper 82/83, and I don't actually remember using it for anything, even once, even though I did the IB track (stats, trig, algebra, calculus, etc).

I used mine constantly in highschool (10 years ago).

It's wild how much curricula within high schools must differ, because my school went out of its way to teach and encourage/require its use on nearly every quiz and exam. We joked sometimes class felt more like calculator class than math class. This was Texas, too, which I hardly consider a pioneer in education. Maybe TI pride?

Now that I think about it, this could have been a strategy my high school drilled into us as a way to increase SAT scores, since TI-84s were allowed to be used there.

>We had to buy those calculators for highschool and it was a waste of money, felt like somebody must be paying somebody off to have thousands of students buy a device that they will certainly never have to use (and is of little educational value).

I suppose it depends if you took advanced math classes or not.

Not only did we use it several times every week for 4 years, I spent 4 years writing tons of programs on it. Best $100 ever spent, thanks mom & dad.

This is probably right, but just to note that it's very much a generational thing. When I got a TI-83 (and then eventually an 89!) it was easily the most advanced handheld computing hardware I had ever been exposed to. The iPhone made sense to me, and I knew it would be huge, the day it came out because of these amazing calculators.

I know technology has moved on and all, but much nostalgic respect to these amazing calculators.

Definitely. At the very least, given the slow change in which ones are accepted, a cheap rental setup seems like the baseline that should exist... but everyone had to buy their own for my schools.

concur .. better to have a 40-buck fx82 for daily math and use Desmos for graphing, than fork out 250 to 300 for a super-duper calc they wont use.

I was in (Catholic) HS 30 years ago and we used our TI-82s extensively in AP Calc.

Probably have not touched mine since college.