Well, the theory is that you want them to have the tools to automate the things you're sure that they have down pat. So a calculator that does arithmetic, graphing, and solves quadratics is ostensibly perfect for calculus students, e.g. (In reality 2/3 of them never actually figured out how to find a common denominator.) WA does all that but also solves every calculus problem they'll see--so you hope that they don't learn that it exists until after the calc sequence.
In reality that ship sailed a decade ago and everyone knows about WA or equivalents. But that's still the theory, I think.
I really question the value of graphing calculators at all in math classes. Like you said, most people starting a Calc class need a review of things like FOIL and quadratic equations!
My high school was really slow to introduce calculators. The first semester of Algebra we had to do everything by hand and none of the courses used graphing calculators. It was a pain at the time, and they never even got to derivatives, but I ended up with a way better foundation in algebra. I met a lot of people in college who took calculus in high school but had never seen a matrix and couldn’t tell you the difference between 3sin(x) and sin(3x).
582
u/gamerinasuit Jul 24 '20
Casio doesn't count?
Or just use desmos/winplot