Calculator Wars at your School

[saifrc]

It wasn't a "war" per se, but a series of status symbols :-P

I went to a high school in a very well-off district, where every student was *required* to own a TI graphing calculator. (Can you believe it?) When I started as a freshman in 1996, my Algebra II/Trigonometry class used a textbook that "required" the TI-82, and that's what was printed on the supplies list for that class, so that's what my family (begrudgingly) purchased for me.

Because I didn't have Internet access at home, and because I wasn't keeping up with calculator technology, I didn't know that the TI-83 had JUST come out. I felt like an idiot showing up with my old-fashioned TI-82, while many of my classmates (who didn't actually read or follow the supplies list) showed up with the much cooler TI-83. A few of my classmates had gotten a TI-85, either as a hand-me-down from older siblings, or because they simply knew (or their parents knew) that it was more powerful, but I didn't have anyone to give me that kind of advice.

For the next couple of years, I envied my friends who had the TI-83, the TI-85, and the brand-new TI-86, not just because they owned more capable calculators, but also because...all of those calculators had been hacked to allow for assembly language programming and GAMES! It would be a few more years before an exploit would be found for the TI-82 to allow it to run similar games. My TI-82 was at the bottom of the food chain, even as I eventually became the top math student in the school. (One of my good friends was slightly worse off than me, because he actually had a hand-me-down TI-81...with no link port! Can you imagine? ?)

HOWEVER: After I joined the math team, I got to use—and take home—school-owned calculators! When the TI-92 came out, I was one of the first people to get their hands on one. When the TI-89 came out, I traded in the TI-92 for it. I did eventually have to return them when I graduated, but that was okay with me, since...

...Once I entered college as a math major, I realized that I didn't really *need* a graphing calculator. The vast majority of my work was done in blue pen on white paper without a calculator at all. I did eventually pick up my own TI-89 for practical use, when I worked as a grader, but I still own that TI-82 to this day. (And a lot more than that; I'm a veritable calculator junkie.)

During my time in high school, I knew only one person who had an HP48 of some kind of flavor. He had a HUGE chip on his shoulder about it, touting the power, the display, and the superiority of RPN. We all knew he was a huge dork. ? Maybe some of the kids in my school from East Asia were using Casios, but generally speaking, it was TI or nothing.

In retrospect, I'm more upset than anything that our school had the gall to expect every family to buy a graphing calculator when the school district was so wealthy; it was one of the things that my parents were the most sore about, since the school didn't require my older brother or sister to own one when they went to the same school. Nowadays, as I see schools assigning laptops to students, it feels like such a weird historical anomaly to design a curriculum around a specific graphing calculator and force everyone to use it. I've been tempted to buy a TI-84 CE just to see what they're like now, but I own too many calculators as it is! (See below...)