![\"Calculator](\"\/content\/images\/2014\/Jul\/calculator1.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSo I was in Kmart the other day, and saw this calculator on sale for $15:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Wow!<\/em> I thought. Can you really get a quality graphics calculator for $15?<\/em><\/p>\n Okay, not really. But I still bought it anyway, for a reason even worse than gullibility: pure curiosity. Surely this is terrible. How terrible can it be?<\/em><\/p>\n But let’s give this calculator the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it will blow me away. Maybe Kmart have managed to make a decent calculator affordable where TI and Casio haven’t. (Well, I assume the big names know how to make an affordable graphics calculator. They’ve just chosen not to…)<\/p>\n The back of the packaging promised these features:<\/p>\n Inside I found the calculator, a cover and a surprisingly thick instruction manual:<\/p>\n After eventually figuring out how to remove the cover (it just pulls off instead of sliding), I found the calculator very comfortable to hold. It’s lighter than my phone, and has a nice rubber edging to it. So there’s one plus!<\/p>\n I pushed the ON button, and… it turned on! All going well so far.<\/p>\n But going by the features listed on the package, while it’s all technically<\/em> true, I would never want to rely on them in the classroom. Despite the screen being big enough for more, it can only show one and a half lines of text. The “dot matrix” only covers about half of the screen, which is the area used to draw a graph. I did get it to draw this nice(ish) looking graph:<\/p>\n That is a graph of y = 0.5 sin(π•x\/12). I only got it to look like that by defining the screen dimensions manually. That is, because I already know exactly what the graph looks like<\/em>. It would have been a lot quicker and easier on paper.<\/p>\n And there is a trace function. It shows a flashing dot on the curve that you can move, and nothing else. Certainly no values. But, you know, it traces!<\/p>\n How does it go with calculations? It works well enough as a basic scientific calculator. But apparently this is a valid input:<\/p>\n I was curious how many levels of this you could have before you got a stack error. Answer: 12.<\/p>\n And it’s programmable. Apparently. Though I did some programming with assembly code at uni, that seemed a lot less archaic than what the instruction manual was suggesting for this calculator.<\/p>\n Honestly, for the price it really doesn’t do that badly. But for a similar price, you can get a decently made scientific calculator with actually useful features, like displaying fractions properly and remembering past inputs. There’s really only one use case I can think of for buying a calculator like this: if you’re a maths blogger, and you feel like writing something silly instead of something interesting and useful.<\/p>\n Is that joke worth $15? No, not really.<\/p>\n I did buy other stuff that day that I plan to make use of for real maths lessons. I’ll blog about them one day, when I’m not feeling so silly.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So I was in Kmart the other day, and saw this calculator on sale for $15: Wow! I thought. Can you really get a quality graphics calculator for $15? Okay, not really. But I still bought it anyway, for a reason even worse than gullibility: pure curiosity. Surely this is terrible. How terrible can it … <\/p>\n![\"features\"](\"\/content\/images\/2014\/Jul\/calculator2.jpg\")
\nDot matrix! Like the old printers!<\/em><\/p>\n![\"contents\"](\"\/content\/images\/2014\/Jul\/calculator3.jpg\")
\nGee, the design on that cover sure looks familiar…<\/em><\/p>\n![\"sine](\"\/content\/images\/2014\/Jul\/calculator4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"no](\"\/content\/images\/2014\/Jul\/calculator5.jpg\")
\nOf course it’s 16. What do you mean the parens should match?<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Programming\"](\"\/content\/images\/2014\/Jul\/calculator6.jpg\")
\nArgh! The goto! The goto!<\/em><\/p>\n