The death of calculator market?

[Carlos295pz]

Due to the current situation, many countries have opted for distance education for a long period, and it seems that education will take that course because it will find great benefits. The PC and smartphones will take the true importance in education, at least one more massive and current for these times (They are re-claimed).

I do not pretend to be fatalistic, however is a reformulation of the capabilities of the current calculator software planned? is that possible? Why would someone be interested in buying a calculator right now? a long time has passed and we have not yet received a statement. Is starting to charge for the virtual-PC calculator one of the measures?

LATIN AMERICA: The student will no longer leave home, why would he need a calculator if his work will be perennial on the computer and the phone with educational tools that were always at hand but that many times due to the ineptitude of the teachers not were used properly, For now I have been very careful with this and I do not recommend buying in case you ask me.

[pinkman]

I don’t think teachers will like to have a classroom full of students using their smartphones.
The calculator is a nice tool dedicated to maths, even if there are always games on them, but it is not as tempting as social networks.

France: There is also the exam mode, even if some parents (and teachers) would like it to disappear, because it reinforces social inequalities.

[Dave Britten]

(06-09-2020 12:00 PM)pinkman Wrote:  I don’t think teachers will like to have a classroom full of students using their smartphones.
The calculator is a nice tool dedicated to maths, even if there are always games on them, but it is not as tempting as social networks.

France: There is also the exam mode, even if some parents (and teachers) would like it to disappear, because it reinforces social inequalities.

In a traditional classroom setting, sure, but when all of your students are in their own homes having class via Zoom/WebEx/Google Meet, it's pretty much impossible to police what device they're using. I suspect TI is a bit nervous about what their back-to-school revenues will look like this fall.

[pinkman]

My daughter confessed that she and all her classmates communicated the results via WhatsApp or equivalent, during a Zoom/WebWx course. There is no way to police the students during locked down. But I don’t think we’re at the beginning of a new era of successive locked down periods (maybe I am wrong).

So, IMHO, for TI, Casio, HP and others the challenge is always the same: create the most complete but cheapest tools to help students finish their studies and quickly forget calculators because of smartphones or computer tools that make calculators look like useless dinosaurs.

[pinkman]

According to this article of 2019 (French, sorry : https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/high...es-1124852), the constant evolution of school curricula and the rules of the exam mode makes sales stable.
This was before COVID of course.

“ Reste que les rivaux Casio et Texas Instruments partagent une particularité : ce ne sont pas les calculatrices qui les font vivre. Le premier génère l'essentiel de ses revenus via ses montres, le second avec ses activités dans les semi-conducteurs. La calculatrice ne représente l'avenir ni de l'un ni de l'autre, mais ce produit n'est pas encore à classer dans la catégorie « vintage » et représente une jolie rente de situation pour eux.”

“ The fact remains that the rivals Casio and Texas Instruments share a peculiarity: it is not the calculators that keep them alive. The former generates most of its income from watches, the latter from its activities in semiconductors. The calculator does not represent the future of either, but this product is not yet to be classified in the “vintage” category and represents a nice situation for them.”

(Not a word about HP or NumWorks, but it is not specialized press)

[cyrille de brébisson]

Hello,

What it boils down to is "official" tests...

As long as "officials" tests with students sitting in a controlled environment exists, calculators stays a market as each student will have to come with his calculator.

To return on some points made:
- Covid showed that distance learning sucks. It has been tested around the world in mass and the agreement seems to be that... it sucks. For having 2 kids (10 and 13) that have lived through it, as a parent, I can tell that... it sucked (from a learning standpoint)... so covid will not do anything against calcs

- Yes, computers and smartphones can do all what the calculators can... (give or take)... There is an app for it. BUT and it is a big BUT, all these apps are separate, single purpose entities. They do NOT group all the math in one place, they all have different UI, different bugs, different ways to do things and there is no way to exchange data from one to the other (at least not in a meaningful way). the calculator do allow you to do that. it is, to some extent, priceless.

Cyrille

[carey]

An example of the power and convenience of CAS calculators over desktop and mobile alternatives is that they easily handle symbolic matrices (e.g., matrices filled with polynomial elements) which popular open-source numerical software (e.g., NumPy) cannot. While symbolic matrix operations are available in desktop and mobile CAS systems they are seldom as convenient to use as in a CAS calculator.

Admittedly, symbolic matrices (useful in control systems) are not a common use for calculators, but they represent one among many long-standing strengths of CAS calculators over non-calculator alternatives. So paraphrasing Mark Twain, "reports of the death of the CAS calculator market may be greatly exaggerated."

[fakuivan]

Calculators are not practical anymore, except for stupid on-premise exams that only evaluate the student in isolation, not at all the scenario they'll be working in in the future. You have much powerful tools available nowadays. As for what some have said about the experience being "unified", that is not unique to calculators, that happens with any general purpose math software like Xcas (shares CAS with the HP prime), matlab, python, julia, all are general purpose and have their offerings.

I personally use the HP Prime as a toy where I can play around with giac CAS. I find the language quite interesting and it can be addictive sometimes, like lisp but with many math features. I sometimes find myself playing with it just like I'd do with games or social media on my phone sometimes leaving it on my nightstand or taking it to the toilet lol. The keyboard layout is horrible but after more than 1000 lines of code and countless exams you get used to it. Debugging is practically non existent on my hardware, it crashes as soon as I call the debug function. The screen is super tiny, but it horizontally fits as many characters as the github page on the default size.

So I totally agree calculators don't have a profitable market outside "physical" schools, but I think I'm going to keep enjoying mine to goof around.

[medwatt]

I feel all these modern calculators are kind of useless. They are just fancy machines that seem to cater for the wrong audience. I graduated high school with Casio FX 115 calculator. I then went to do a bachelors in electrical engineering and a master's in microelectronics. You might be surprised to hear this but I have not had a need for anything more than a simple scientific calculator. Even as engineering student, I was hardly required to do any calculations. The only time I remember requiring the use of a calculator was in my introductory circuit analysis class where I needed to convert between Cartesian and Polar coordinates. I also found the Casio to be the best in this regard as you could transform between the two in just 1 keystroke. I find calculators like the Nsipre and Prime both very lacking and laborious for my use case. Neither of them allow you to create custom menus so that you can easily access your commonly used functions. I'm just not interested in hunting down a function deep inside functions tree. Besides this, every calculator manufacturer tries to force it's own specific programming language on the user, a skill that becomes useless when you stop using the calculator.

[Albert Chan]

(10-03-2020 12:53 PM)medwatt Wrote:  I graduated high school with Casio FX 115 calculator.

Casio FX 115 is still my most used calculator, right by my bedside

[Dave Britten]

(10-03-2020 01:33 PM)Albert Chan Wrote:  

(10-03-2020 12:53 PM)medwatt Wrote:  I graduated high school with Casio FX 115 calculator.

Casio FX 115 is still my most used calculator, right by my bedside

I'm just relieved to know I'm not the only one that keeps a calculator by the bedside.

[grsbanks]

(10-03-2020 02:56 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  I'm just relieved to know I'm not the only one that keeps a calculator by the bedside.

I have a 41C + Time Module that serves as an alarm clock

[Dave Britten]

(10-03-2020 03:56 PM)grsbanks Wrote:  

(10-03-2020 02:56 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  I'm just relieved to know I'm not the only one that keeps a calculator by the bedside.

I have a 41C + Time Module that serves as an alarm clock

Funny, my alarm clock is a 48G with some display annunciator issues that has served me well as an alarm clock for many years. There's a small program "WORK" assigned to the custom menu that just sets an alarm for the next occurrence of 7:00 AM and then turns off. I got it for $5 at a flea market with the box and manual.

[Eddie W. Shore]

I think it will be a while before calculators completely go away. Will there be less models (and clones of those models)? Yes.

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

Some of you seem to have either very good ears or a very light sleep - or both :-) I would definitely not wake up from the beep of an HP41 or 48...
When I need to go to work early I need both my mobile phones (my private one and the company phone) set to maximum volume and a normal alarm clock just in case...

And no, as long as they are used at school (where mobile phones / smartphones are usually not allowed) calculators will have their market. Outside school they will be gone in 10 years at latest.

Regards
Max

[Dave Britten]

(10-03-2020 04:40 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  Some of you seem to have either very good ears or a very light sleep - or both :-) I would definitely not wake up from the beep of an HP41 or 48...
When I need to go to work early I need both my mobile phones (my private one and the company phone) set to maximum volume and a normal alarm clock just in case...

My brain is tuned to it. I regularly sleep through my wife's alarm and routine (she gets up a little bit before I do), but I've only slept through my own 48G alarm clock a couple times. And fortunately not by much!

[TheLastMillennial]

Just a few weeks ago, I posted a question on r/Teachers and r/matheducation asking about teacher's opinions on Assembly being removed on the TI-84 Plus CE.

I got a lot of good responses and I was surprised how many teachers mentioned they are ready to phase out calculators completely in favor of using software alternatives like Geogebra and Desmos. Now, my data is in no way scientific or final, but it's still relevant to this topic so I thought I'd share.

[medwatt]

(10-03-2020 01:33 PM)Albert Chan Wrote:  

(10-03-2020 12:53 PM)medwatt Wrote:  I graduated high school with Casio FX 115 calculator.

Casio FX 115 is still my most used calculator, right by my bedside

I recently got the FX 991 and it's almost the same as the FX 115 with a slightly better screen. I currently own about 10 calculators and I feel Casio scientific calculators are the best in terms of usability. Casio's idea of using modes that allows access to relevant functions in just 1 or 2 keystrokes is the best idea ever in terms of usability. I don't really care how capable a calculator is if you have to hunt down deep menus just to locate the function and this is the reason why I'm not a fan of many of the modern calculators. The Nspire almost solved this problem by including a keyboard but the keyboard is just terrible. I feel it the Prime provided the ability of creating custom menus (like the HP50g), I'd be using it more, but for now, nothing is replacing the Casio 991 (or some equivalent) model.

[ramon_ea1gth]

Interesting discussion

I believe that an advanced calculator can be a great tool to stay focused while studying, e.g., engineering, and a reason to enjoy (even addictively) some of the matters being studied.

The mobile phone and related apps are really useful, as nowadays most of us carry it everywhere. But it is easy to get out of focus with all the incoming notifications and options to procrastinate while in our hands. The computer with Internet connection can also be a blessing or a nightmare in this sense. Anyway, I like having a good calc app for those cases when I have only the mobile in hand.

While studying engineering (I am thinking about electrical/telecom as examples), one of the most difficult matters is to properly integrate in our mind all the disciplines being studied: maths, physics (and management of units), statistics, linear systems, economics, electronics, radio engineering, electromagnetics, signal processing... I think that a good calculator can be a great tool to play with these subjects, create an own set of programs/applications and help with this brain integration... whether an advanced calculator is allowed or not in an exam.

I agree that an advanced calculator has to be flexible and customizable enough to get adapted to the user's preferences, so a broad set of custom operations can be chosen to be done with a few keypresses. If not, the advantage against the computer keyboard will be lost.

Of course: a different matter is what happens when getting a job. It will really depend on the position. I have found students and colleagues complaining about useless subjects studied during the degree/master that others found extremely useful and even missed having a more in-depth knowledge.

For me, I found that learning to use an advanced calculator was worth: computers, software and mobile phones change in a few years' time and new technologies replace the older ones. But the time invested in learning the calculator pays, as when you grab it again from your drawer some time later, your fingers remember where to press when you need to research some standard or special calculation.

[harryp]

In general I think that a dedicated device is usually better at the task than a GPC (general purpose computer.) If I want to listen to music I could do it on a tablet, laptop or phone, but I'd rather have an MP3. It's optimized for music listening and it's almost weightless. And - no distractions. I'm not going to answer email on it.
I think for number crunching a calculator is better. It's optimized to work with numbers and allow for quick 'what-ifs' and you don't have much overhead to learn. With Excel you'd have to learn Excel and then learn the formulas and then take care not to make a mistake with those.
I see the value and utility of some of the PC heavy math and design programs and they are there for certain types of work that are beyond a calculator. But I've always rather used a calculator for number stuff than anything else.