The problem here is that the mathematics education industry is bought and paid for by educational vendors in general and Texas Instruments in particular. My wi

The problem here is that the mathematics education industry is bought and paid for by educational vendors in general and Texas Instruments in particular. My wife's school has its own TI Vendor who makes sure to come by every month or two with free goodies for the teachers (and frequently hosts events with free drinks for the teachers and give-aways, including free calculators.) TI also has an educator conference that it encourages member schools to pay for teachers to attend. In return, the school pays for classroom sets of calculators, training for teachers and proprietary software and hardware that interfaces directly with the calculator for use in math and science classes. Given the number of high school math textbooks with extra sections for use with calculators and recommendations of a particular brand of calculator, it's hard to imagine that TI isn't marketing to the textbook companies as well. With regards to education, the involved parties operate much like Oracle and the other "complete systems" vendors in the enterprise world: buy influence with the decision-makers and their subordinates, keep up the hard sell until the contract is won and then maintain the sell to ensure future business. That's not to say that the educational vendors give bad customer service, but at the same time, providing the end-users (the students) with a quality product at a reasonable price is hardly the primary concern.