5447 Bug/feature? Random functions in plot views

[Tim Wessman]

It's not a bug so much as an expected artifact of the plotting engine and table engine used in the function/param/polar/sequence.

Basically, it was first implemented in the 39gII where memory was a huge concern. There is not an off screen memory location where the plotting information is kept or saved and hence the only record of the graph is what is shown on screen. Thus re-evaluation happens when movement or new information is needed.

Even with the much more memory available on Prime however, it really isn't feasible to store all possible data on numerical positions you could possibly see in a function. If you really would like to be viewing a snapshot of that moment of randomness, the recommended way to do it is using the 2var scatter plot.

On the 50g and similar, you will see a similar thing where the table or graph values constantly change as you move around to new locations not shown on the screen.

It could be argued also the current behavior is actually much more mathematically exact as you are getting constantly changing random values. Hence any effort to "stop" that randomness is actually giving an inaccurate representation of the true behavior of what is being drawn or shown. The trace value or the value at that location can't actually be known since there is randomness at that point!