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I love how the answer given to this problem is more funding. Such an indication of what's wrong with modern education. This entire article is exposing the TI mo

I love how the answer given to this problem is more funding. Such an indication of what's wrong with modern education. This entire article is exposing the TI monopoly on calculators, getting 85-90% profit margins, and our solution is to strike to get taxpayer money to keep paying for the things? We should encourage competition. Consider - an app that replicates this functionality on the phone, but tracks if the user at any point closes the app. This then is reported to the teacher so the teacher knows if there was any cheating.

mc3 7y ago
What about a government mandated price ceiling? Anyone can bid to be the official supplier or calculators, as long as they sell to the government wholesale at a maximum of $20 (or whatever is a good price).
- joecool1029 7y ago
  With a price ceiling like that Casio would be pumping out calculators all day everyday just like F91W's.
gowld 7y ago
Here's an idea: Stop trying force the backwards notion that using tools is cheating. There is 0 reason that any high-stakes test needs a calculator. This simple change will improve the quality of education and reduce the cost of calculators.
- ddek 7y ago
  I understand that there are virtually no tests that _actually_ need a TI calculator. They're mad useful for learning - you can explore maths very effectively, but there's a learning curve to it. I started using GraphNCalc83 on my iPhone (maybe available on Android - I'm sure an alternative is if not), and I question the real need for a £120 calculator.
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    The only test I ever took which needed a TI calculator was the AP calculus exam. I borrowed one from the school, and it was a bit of a pain to figure out the UI during the test, but overall it went fine. The calculators are a completely counter-productive and distracting tool for “learning” which have contributed to a watered down curriculum with more mindless button punching and less thinking than before. Anecdotally some students never recover from the mistaken idea that math class is about learning how calculators work. There is no reason to assign problems which require a calculator in high school mathematics courses, and for anything that would benefit, there’s a huge advantage in using a computer with a full-sized keyboard and a general-purpose programming language, or even a smartphone with a web browser. Do your basic plotting at the free desmos.com, with the added bonus that sharing plots with classmates is trivial because you can generate a URL.
- vortico 7y ago
  You can Google almost any high school math question verbatim and find a QA site with the verbatim answer, perhaps with numbers switched around.
  - ben-schaaf 7y ago
    A lot of the time you can also just ask wolfram alpha (or at least once you have a formula) and you'll get the answer.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Which just speaks to the low quality of high school math questions, no an inherent flaw with providing access to technology. Try doing the same with the typical AMC problem…
    - andrepd 7y ago
      No, it speaks that there are hundreds of millions of pupils worldwide learning roughly the same material. Try making a creative new question for each, every year...
      - failrate 7y ago
        Procedural generation of math problems is solved.
        andrepd 7y ago
        Unless you mean "changing the numbers around" there is no universe where this is remotely true.
        failrate 7y ago
        I don't think you are using your imagination. Madlibs-style templating is one solution. Another would be using a context free grammar. Evolutionary equation generation.
m463 7y ago
forget the app or phone how about: a standardized test calculator specification, with careful boundaries around what is required, what is permitted and what is not. Then let competition drive prices and features.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  This doesn't really work in the classroom, because right now teachers rely on being able to teach exactly how to perform a given calculation. Have lots of different calculators with differing interfaces, some of which the teacher doesn't even know, and teaching becomes much more difficult.
  - Quiark 7y ago
    Honestly that sounds like a bug to be fixed. You don't teach to drive exactly one type of car.
    - smelendez 7y ago
      I mean, you sort of do! Every modern US car has a wheel to steer, a brake pedal on the left, a gas pedal on the right. Calculator UIs vary way more than that. In the US, you can drive a manual after training on automatic, but that's not true everywhere. And in-car driving instruction happens with the teacher next to the student in a car they're familiar with. It's not like they're radioing to 30 students each in a separate car. Also, the calculator is a tool to teach math. If someone gets distracted figuring out the calculator, they're behind. The student driver car is to teach driving.
      - mixmastamyk 7y ago
        Sounds like the UI needs a spec as well then.
  - bonoboTP 7y ago
    Somehow other countries manage. For some reason Americans are simultaneously considered innovative and can-do minded but they are also so quick to throw up their hands "nope, can't be done"-style on so many issues that just don't exist elsewhere.
enjoyyourlife 7y ago
>Consider - an app that replicates this functionality on the phone ClassCalc already does this
asdff 7y ago
On the other hand, you have a product that has been identical for the past 25 years or so, that just about every high schooler in america has at one point or another temporarily. The used market must be absolutely massive, larger than any other piece of consumer electronics. No wonder TI can't budge from their pricing. These things also do not break. I've left mine out in a blizzard. You throw them at a wall and you will find your ti84 sitting happily embedded in a crater in the drywall.
briandear 7y ago
> but tracks if the user at any point closes the app. This then is reported to the teacher so the teacher knows if there was any cheating. Apple Classroom does this.
jsf01 7y ago
Every attempt to prevent cheating in that way is a huge pain full of edge cases and false positives, and is usually ineffective. Would be better to either embrace technology and accept that the internet is a possible source of help or go manual/mechanical, but trying to artificially limit a cell phone or laptop is doomed from the start. t. Student who’s had to deal with lockdown browser and similar school-specific proprietary malware.
- chr1 7y ago
  Why is using the internet even considered as cheating? After all school is supposed to teach children to find knowledge they want for themselves, and learning to use internet for that is much more useful than learning to use obscure pieace of a technology from 80s, which is not used anywhere else.
smelendez 7y ago
I could see maybe allowing an app on a locked down tablet provided by the school and wiped before the exam. Still a big hardware and IT burden. And you need to lock the student in the app, not record if they close it, because it's so easy to accidentally switch apps with a stray finger or misplaced muscle memory. Bring your own device sounds like a mess. Someone would create an app that looks like the locked down app but isn't really, etc. Or students would sneak in a second phone. You really don't want to give teenagers the temptation to sneak online or into their notes during exams.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  Why not, that's what they'll do for their jos later anyway.
vkou 7y ago
> I love how the answer given to this problem is more funding. Such an indication of what's wrong with modern education. This entire article is exposing the TI monopoly on calculators, getting 85-90% profit margins, and our solution is to strike to get taxpayer money to keep paying for the things? We should encourage competition. I love how the first answer that HN proposes to a social problem is 'more capitalism'. Why not... Just not use graphing calculators in high schools? What's wrong with pencil and graph paper? Not a single one of my algebra or calculus courses ever used the TI-83 for anything that I couldn't do by hand, or with an $8 calculator. There is zero reason for why high school test questions should ever require a smartphone, app, calculator, or any other electronic device.
- chr1 7y ago
  Not using calculators is a good solution, using apps on computers or smartphones to teach children how to use the tools the scientists use is even better. It would allow to reduce the amount of boring tasks performed in math class and increase the amount of real math. More capitalism (or better to say market) is always good answer because it helps to solve situations where people are stuck with inefficient and useless products. If children and parents could choose between schools with different programs, and teaching apps, this expensive and outdated calculator would not exist now.
  - vkou 7y ago
    > Not using calculators is a good solution, using apps on computers or smartphones to teach children how to use the tools the scientists use is even better. It would allow to reduce the amount of boring tasks performed in math class and increase the amount of real math. Scientists don't use apps on computers or smartphones. Scientists use Jupyter and Matlab. For high school courses, you could even get away with something like Excel or Sheets, or LibreCalc. > More capitalism (or better to say market) is always good answer because it helps to solve situations where people are stuck with inefficient and useless products. The best product in this case, is no product. > If children and parents could choose between schools with different programs, and teaching apps, this expensive and outdated calculator would not exist now. This is the last thing on people's minds when choosing schools.
boomboomsubban 7y ago
>I love how the answer given to this problem is more funding. Such an indication of what's wrong with modern education. The "answer given" was just a quote from a teacher about the millions of different ways education is underfunded, and not really about the calculator issue specifically. Yes, the calculator problem could be solved in a wide variety of methods. Kids needing their own calculators is just one example of how underfunded schools are.
punnerud 7y ago
And to prevent accidentally closing the app you tell the kids to activate “Kiosk mode” for the app, then they have to excuse if the close it. Works on both Android and iPhone.

mc3 7y ago

What about a government mandated price ceiling? Anyone can bid to be the official supplier or calculators, as long as they sell to the government wholesale at a maximum of $20 (or whatever is a good price).

joecool1029 7y ago
With a price ceiling like that Casio would be pumping out calculators all day everyday just like F91W's.

gowld 7y ago

Here's an idea: Stop trying force the backwards notion that using tools is cheating. There is 0 reason that any high-stakes test needs a calculator. This simple change will improve the quality of education and reduce the cost of calculators.

ddek 7y ago
I understand that there are virtually no tests that _actually_ need a TI calculator. They're mad useful for learning - you can explore maths very effectively, but there's a learning curve to it. I started using GraphNCalc83 on my iPhone (maybe available on Android - I'm sure an alternative is if not), and I question the real need for a £120 calculator.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  The only test I ever took which needed a TI calculator was the AP calculus exam. I borrowed one from the school, and it was a bit of a pain to figure out the UI during the test, but overall it went fine. The calculators are a completely counter-productive and distracting tool for “learning” which have contributed to a watered down curriculum with more mindless button punching and less thinking than before. Anecdotally some students never recover from the mistaken idea that math class is about learning how calculators work. There is no reason to assign problems which require a calculator in high school mathematics courses, and for anything that would benefit, there’s a huge advantage in using a computer with a full-sized keyboard and a general-purpose programming language, or even a smartphone with a web browser. Do your basic plotting at the free desmos.com, with the added bonus that sharing plots with classmates is trivial because you can generate a URL.
vortico 7y ago
You can Google almost any high school math question verbatim and find a QA site with the verbatim answer, perhaps with numbers switched around.
- ben-schaaf 7y ago
  A lot of the time you can also just ask wolfram alpha (or at least once you have a formula) and you'll get the answer.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Which just speaks to the low quality of high school math questions, no an inherent flaw with providing access to technology. Try doing the same with the typical AMC problem…
  - andrepd 7y ago
    No, it speaks that there are hundreds of millions of pupils worldwide learning roughly the same material. Try making a creative new question for each, every year...
    - failrate 7y ago
      Procedural generation of math problems is solved.
      - andrepd 7y ago
        Unless you mean "changing the numbers around" there is no universe where this is remotely true.
        failrate 7y ago
        I don't think you are using your imagination. Madlibs-style templating is one solution. Another would be using a context free grammar. Evolutionary equation generation.

m463 7y ago

forget the app or phone how about: a standardized test calculator specification, with careful boundaries around what is required, what is permitted and what is not. Then let competition drive prices and features.

CydeWeys 7y ago
This doesn't really work in the classroom, because right now teachers rely on being able to teach exactly how to perform a given calculation. Have lots of different calculators with differing interfaces, some of which the teacher doesn't even know, and teaching becomes much more difficult.
- Quiark 7y ago
  Honestly that sounds like a bug to be fixed. You don't teach to drive exactly one type of car.
  - smelendez 7y ago
    I mean, you sort of do! Every modern US car has a wheel to steer, a brake pedal on the left, a gas pedal on the right. Calculator UIs vary way more than that. In the US, you can drive a manual after training on automatic, but that's not true everywhere. And in-car driving instruction happens with the teacher next to the student in a car they're familiar with. It's not like they're radioing to 30 students each in a separate car. Also, the calculator is a tool to teach math. If someone gets distracted figuring out the calculator, they're behind. The student driver car is to teach driving.
    - mixmastamyk 7y ago
      Sounds like the UI needs a spec as well then.
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  Somehow other countries manage. For some reason Americans are simultaneously considered innovative and can-do minded but they are also so quick to throw up their hands "nope, can't be done"-style on so many issues that just don't exist elsewhere.

enjoyyourlife 7y ago

>Consider - an app that replicates this functionality on the phone ClassCalc already does this

asdff 7y ago

On the other hand, you have a product that has been identical for the past 25 years or so, that just about every high schooler in america has at one point or another temporarily. The used market must be absolutely massive, larger than any other piece of consumer electronics. No wonder TI can't budge from their pricing. These things also do not break. I've left mine out in a blizzard. You throw them at a wall and you will find your ti84 sitting happily embedded in a crater in the drywall.

briandear 7y ago

> but tracks if the user at any point closes the app. This then is reported to the teacher so the teacher knows if there was any cheating. Apple Classroom does this.

jsf01 7y ago

Every attempt to prevent cheating in that way is a huge pain full of edge cases and false positives, and is usually ineffective. Would be better to either embrace technology and accept that the internet is a possible source of help or go manual/mechanical, but trying to artificially limit a cell phone or laptop is doomed from the start. t. Student who’s had to deal with lockdown browser and similar school-specific proprietary malware.

chr1 7y ago
Why is using the internet even considered as cheating? After all school is supposed to teach children to find knowledge they want for themselves, and learning to use internet for that is much more useful than learning to use obscure pieace of a technology from 80s, which is not used anywhere else.

smelendez 7y ago

I could see maybe allowing an app on a locked down tablet provided by the school and wiped before the exam. Still a big hardware and IT burden. And you need to lock the student in the app, not record if they close it, because it's so easy to accidentally switch apps with a stray finger or misplaced muscle memory. Bring your own device sounds like a mess. Someone would create an app that looks like the locked down app but isn't really, etc. Or students would sneak in a second phone. You really don't want to give teenagers the temptation to sneak online or into their notes during exams.

Kaiyou 7y ago
Why not, that's what they'll do for their jos later anyway.

vkou 7y ago

> I love how the answer given to this problem is more funding. Such an indication of what's wrong with modern education. This entire article is exposing the TI monopoly on calculators, getting 85-90% profit margins, and our solution is to strike to get taxpayer money to keep paying for the things? We should encourage competition. I love how the first answer that HN proposes to a social problem is 'more capitalism'. Why not... Just not use graphing calculators in high schools? What's wrong with pencil and graph paper? Not a single one of my algebra or calculus courses ever used the TI-83 for anything that I couldn't do by hand, or with an $8 calculator. There is zero reason for why high school test questions should ever require a smartphone, app, calculator, or any other electronic device.

chr1 7y ago
Not using calculators is a good solution, using apps on computers or smartphones to teach children how to use the tools the scientists use is even better. It would allow to reduce the amount of boring tasks performed in math class and increase the amount of real math. More capitalism (or better to say market) is always good answer because it helps to solve situations where people are stuck with inefficient and useless products. If children and parents could choose between schools with different programs, and teaching apps, this expensive and outdated calculator would not exist now.
- vkou 7y ago
  > Not using calculators is a good solution, using apps on computers or smartphones to teach children how to use the tools the scientists use is even better. It would allow to reduce the amount of boring tasks performed in math class and increase the amount of real math. Scientists don't use apps on computers or smartphones. Scientists use Jupyter and Matlab. For high school courses, you could even get away with something like Excel or Sheets, or LibreCalc. > More capitalism (or better to say market) is always good answer because it helps to solve situations where people are stuck with inefficient and useless products. The best product in this case, is no product. > If children and parents could choose between schools with different programs, and teaching apps, this expensive and outdated calculator would not exist now. This is the last thing on people's minds when choosing schools.

boomboomsubban 7y ago

>I love how the answer given to this problem is more funding. Such an indication of what's wrong with modern education. The "answer given" was just a quote from a teacher about the millions of different ways education is underfunded, and not really about the calculator issue specifically. Yes, the calculator problem could be solved in a wide variety of methods. Kids needing their own calculators is just one example of how underfunded schools are.

punnerud 7y ago

And to prevent accidentally closing the app you tell the kids to activate “Kiosk mode” for the app, then they have to excuse if the close it. Works on both Android and iPhone.