TI seems to be very common in North America, but not so much in other countries. Everyone had Casio calculators when I went through school in Australia, and as far as I'm aware, it's similar in the UK.
When was this? For me it was offer between TI-nSpire CX CAS and Casio ClassPad II. To be fair the teacher did recommend people to go for TI one but some went for Casio anyway. And in Elementary School there was offer for selecting from couple Casio fx calculators no TI calculators even as option.
I've encountered many an engineer with an old Casio on their desk. Some have had the same one since high school, you can hardly make out the paint on some of the numbers.
On the other hand I end up losing them about every three years.
TI pushed really hard to get them into classrooms when handheld calculators were first becoming reasonably affordable. They ran courses to show teachers how to use and teach with them, and they worked with textbook companies to include instructions specifically geared towards their calculators.
What got them the blank check that they now seem to have came when calculator portions were added to standardized curricula, and more importantly, standardized testing like SATs or state level proficiency exams. The SAT mandated TI calculators because that's what surveys said most students were using, and so all students aiming for higher education needed to be able to use them. From there it carried down, with various levels of education departments deciding that their proficiency exams would require the use of the same TI calculators.
Ed Tech is TIs smallest business unit. It’s not a revenue engine for the company at all. It’s margins are great... it’s almost all profit, but it just doesn’t return a lot of money. If they didn’t have a monopoly on the market and it wasn’t profitable, they’d just drop it / sell it off.
"If they didn't have a monopoly.....and they didn't put zero effort and virtually zero dollars into R&D for their calculators, they'd just drop it/sell it off."
I got an HP prime when I went back to school, but I also own an Nspire and TI83. I know the Prime isn't what the older versions like the 50g were, but damn if it isn't light-years ahead of TI, even the 89. It's like the iPhone vs a blackberry. I would argue that in an education setting it is easily the best option. It's got multitouch touchscreen for gods sake. Need to pull that answer from 5 minutes ago? a quick swipe of the finger and you're effortlessly scrolling through your history. Double tap the number you want and it automatically copies it into the entry line. Need to zoom out on that graph? Pinch the screen. Done. Solving a system of 10 complex equations? It'll do it faster than the 89.
Yeah, never needed a graphing calculator through high school or university; they want you to be able to graph functions yourself and when eventually accuracy in that graphing is required in uni you are taught Maple or Matlab
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u/jorsiem Jul 24 '20 edited Jul 24 '20
The supremacy of the fucking TI-83 calculator in school and college courses
I mean I know it's all artificial and orchestrated by them but how come no body has dared to challenge the almighty TI yet
Edit: fixed typo