I choose "all." That's certainly not correct, since there are 44 000 students at my school and SOMEONE has to use a non-TI. However, it seems that at least 98% use TI's, and that's close enough to "all."

I use a TI-86 because I like the setup better than 83, and because I got it for half the price--$60 (new condition). I plan to buy an 89 because of the large advanced leap between the two. I mainly use the 86 for school notes and games, but I could so much easily use the 89 for most of my problems. Thank God for these graphers, eh?

I'm almost totally sure that I'm the only person who uses a Casio graphing calculator. ^_^ Upon seeing it, each and every person will immediately ask me if they can play with it for a little while. Upon discovering that even though it's in color, there aren't any games on it (I only use it as my standardized-test calculator, when I don't want to reset my TI-83+), they immediately get disgusted and hand it back. ^_^

I was wondering what exactly the 86 has that the 83 doesn't. I have an 83+ and an 89, but just in case the 89 gets banned before I take the SAT's or AP Calc, or maybe if my highschool decides to institue a $!%$ code against CAS, I may want to get an 86 as well. Can anyone here justify buying an 86 in addition to my other calcs?

Advantages of the TI-86 over the TI-83
* higher screen resolution (86 has 128*64, 83 has 96*64).
* more RAM
* it can plot direction fields
* built-in polynomial root finder
* binary, octal, and hexadecimal arithmetic
* built-in measurement conversions
* variable names can have up to 8 characters

and, for the sake of balance:

Advantages of the TI-83 over the TI-86
* split screen mode
* lots more statistics functions
* sequence graphing mode
* interactive TVM solver (the one feature I've never used)
* inString() function
* you can actually see more than the first 5 characters of a menu choice
* because there are fewer functions, it's quicker to use
* more programs available for it
* costs less than TI-86

For the AP calculus test, I'd recommend the 86. However, if you plan to ever take stats, you'll need to keep your 83+. For the SAT, you really don't need a calculator at all.

Thanks

You're welcome.

What does the 83's inString() function do?

See my (slightly) earlier post.

Just so you know, the 89 is no longer allowed on the SATs, they finally caught on about 6 weeks ago

Not that it matters to me. I got an 800 on SAT math and all I brought was a TI-30X.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Oh well, I heard you don't really need a graphics calculator for the SAT's or ACT's. However, if the TI-89 is now banned, why doesnt it say so on the college board web site? Six weeks seems like quite enough time to update the site.(go to the link above for the list of banned types of electronics)

PS
does anyone here now how to change a specific value in a matrix w/o changing the rest of the matrix on the TI-89? For example, if I have matrix1 as [[1,2,3][1,2,3]] how do I change the value in Column 2, Row 1, and still keep the rest of the matrix?

newvalue -> matrix1(1,2)

Thanks again Daniel

All are TI calcs if you are asking about the ones that the school owns.

More than half if you were asking what the students have.

Almost everyone out of 2000 of us have TI calculators, there are about 2 or 3 that have Casios. (I have a TI-82)

I only know 2 or 3 besides me who have TI (86 or better - I own a TI81 and 89) calculator.
Thats actually very good since for now I think none of the teachers know the power of such calculator :)
So if I need some of (too)many functions it has to offer my teacher has no idea what I'm doing :)

At my school in Alexandria, Va., TI-83 graphing calculators are required for the geometry through pre-calculus classes... I dunno about the other higher-level classes.

Since the lowest math course at my school (TJHSST) is geometry, then everybody has to have a TI.

I swear that the question should have been who are you/would vote for, Gore, Bush, or Lybratarians, but oh well...

Anyways...

I go to a middle school (8th grade) and like 30 people have TI-89's. This is a public school. I live in San Diego, CA, USA (American pride! Canadians are tite too!). Anyways, TI's rule, Patrick (the Phoenix author) is my hero.

When will they come out with a C++ compiler for the ti-89?? *sigh*.

Well, thanks, anyways, yah, well, dude, no, shut up, laterz yo, dillio (watch for it in markets soon, it's my scripting language)(Dynamic Intelect Language - Input Output), I'm selling copies for $75, e-mail jeff_jensen@hotmail.com if interested, it's bug free, laterz yo, dillio, yo

yay, i like haveing calcs that can play phenoix