I got all the way through high school (AP calculus, etc., high school class of 2004) and through lots of technical courses in college without ever needing a gra

I got all the way through high school (AP calculus, etc., high school class of 2004) and through lots of technical courses in college without ever needing a graphing calculator, except once during the AP exam, and possibly once for an in-class exam, for which I could borrow one from the school (the rest of the time I just had a $5 used “scientific calculator” but a slide rule would have been just fine, and in college a laptop with real programming languages on it). Learning arcane features of the calculator’s function is not really necessary for the AP exam and is a waste of time, but I would recommend spending a couple hours familiarizing oneself with the basic features before the exam. Students and parents are often fed a misleading impression of what tools they will actually need to work through a course, and pressured to buy calculators that are not necessary, preying on their desire to succeed at school. I think I was the only student in the class with enough moral outrage about TI’s calculator scam to try such a thing, but my impression was that it really had no practical consequences, except for me spending a lot less time than the other students playing low-quality snake, brickout, and tetris clones.