Nobody needs a $100 Texas Instruments graphing calculator to tally up receipts or compute the cosine of 28° (the latter is something a carpenter might need to d

Nobody needs a $100 Texas Instruments graphing calculator to tally up receipts or compute the cosine of 28° (the latter is something a carpenter might need to do, but should not be showing up extensively in high school math classes). If people want to buy $5 “scientific calculator”, a 4-function calculator with a paper tape, use a free calculator app on their phone, type their arithmetic into google, ...., that’s just fine. These devices are simple and straight-forward, and do not need extensive practice to understand. If schools really want to spend class time practicing computations with a portable calculation device, learning how a slide rule works is much more pedagogically valuable. At earlier ages, learning how to use a soroban or counting board is also worthwhile. These devices have no hidden parts, and learning to use them is, in itself, mathematical.