Yesterday I walked into a grocery store in southern France, with my son. We immediately faced the school supplies row. The calculators for sale caught my eyes and I moved towards them looking for a graphing Casio with SD card reader. As I told my son what I was looking for, he interrupted me saying "Dad! I think you would want to look up!" There they were. The two TI nspire models!!! Without any hesitation my hands grabbed 2 units. I quickly learned that my son wanted one too!! I did mention to him a new version of the TI-89 Titanium on the shelf, but that seems moot with the TI-nspire at hand.
I opened the TI-nspire today and started playing with it. TI uhas implemented an unusual keyboard by adding small and elevated buttons to the regular set of buttons. The small buttons re keys to things like =, >, <, EE, the comma, and other operations. It's a document oriented machine and packs a lot of power. The statistical calculations alone are very impressive. As a regression junkie, I was more than impressed--they had all kinds of models you can fit and plus multiple regression. The machine saves the results to a structured variable. You can review the values later too. Moreover, it creates a function for you to use to project for teh dependent variable. They have a whole set of calculations for probability distribution functions, their cumulative values, and inverse values. The TI-nspire is meant to take NO PRISONERS!!
I was also able to write custom functions, one of which used program steps. Editing such a function is easy. The TI-snpire OS has a good diagnostic for detecting syntax errors.
I drew a graph and was able to use the navigation keys to select an area of the graph to zoom in on.
The math and calculus side is very impressive too, as expected. The CD that comes with teh machine has the documentation files that you need to work with the TI-nspire. The machine has a learning curve, given how much power it packs.
Is the TI-nspire superior to the HP-50g. Yes!! TI has put a lot of effort into the machine.
Well, I need to focus on my project at hand. I will play with the TI-snpire when I have some spare time.
Namir
Edited: 1 Aug 2007, 10:04 a.m.