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Hey there thanks for watching, and big thanks again to the people who contributed to this.
Here are some sources – it’s a bit of a hodgepodge because, honestly, a lot of it was too niche to include in a video, but there’s a lot to dig into.
You Tube Channels:
The TI Wizard
Squakewars
Smithsonian’s calculator:
An Agenda for Action:
NYT about “prose of math.”
Sample curriculum:
Wiki about the Math Wars – I was gonna include this in the calculator vid, but it is a bit broader than calculators and includes a larger scope curriculum debate.
This is the paper I read about that:
Changes in the SAT in 1994:
A down and dirty retrospective on calculators in classes:
NYT on calcs:
History of Demana and Waits:
Vintage TI Ad:
Teacher Leader Vid:
Icarus website:
My favorite TI History website:
An iconic close second (not because it’s worse, but it’s just less related to my needs doing the history stuff).
Longer history of entrance exams. I originally was gonna include a beat about how the College Board really called the shots here, but the infamous “AGENDA FOR ACTION” made me think that the movement was best credited to start there, and may have proceeded regardless (though the College Board doubtless could have squashed anything if they had some crazed anti-calculator radicals in charge).
Good synopsis of Calculator controversies. Though the sorta granular nature of the timeline (it’s cool in this test, not on this test, etc) might make clear why I paper over some specifics, since they end up leading to a similar place, but have a lot of points where I might trip into small factual errors (that, IMHO, are irrelevant to the overall point of the vid).
Some of the in depth studies that made me less arrogant about this stuff:
Sweeping thing about tech in Math:
Fun Wired story about Drug Wars and the programmer for TI:
Jared Dixon
16.04.2023OMG this memory. I had told my folks they had to get me a TI-89 for AP Calculus. I barely remember AP Calc, but I have fond memories of playing drug wars and Mario between classes.
Steffen Spear
15.04.2023This was such a lovely call back to a bright part of a dim time in my life. Thanks for making this video. 🙂
Dingus!
15.04.2023You know why, its because they have so much security on our computers it’s comparable to the Chinese government.
T K
15.04.2023algorithmic punch!
(Thanks for following this trail, Detective)
He who has no identity
15.04.2023I became interested in programming in elementary school when playing a game meant getting a basic book and typing many pages of code in a trs-80 perfectly to get it to play. Then figuring out what the different instructions meant and altering the colors, sound and text, then the rules of the game.
Only to spend 30 minutes saving it to a cassette tape to play later.
The TI calculators were a massive upgrade by the time I got to high school
danboy12342 Mui
15.04.2023(context: im a homebrew hacker in my spare time) the ti nspires are among the best emulators for the price, you can do everything from atari 8 bit games to gba
Mike Iversen
15.04.2023Ironically the TI 84 is what got me interested in software development. Seeing that you could play games on them made me think "Wow that's so cool!" And there was a decent amount of them that were written in TI Basic so I was able to read, learn and understand it. Texas instruments is singlehandedly responsible for me becoming a software engineer today, all because of a graphing calculator. And that's pretty cool 🙂
joel gillette
15.04.2023I never downloaded any games onto my calculator hut there was some on it when i bought it.
William Knight
15.04.2023I remember splurging on a ti-83 plus silver edition with an accelerated processor. I wrote a simple text-based blackjack program in basic. I actually wrote the first version using just the calculator. Then I bought the serial connector cable to connect to my computer and wrote an updated version.
Homework was never my strong suit, I just didn't have the focus to get through it. I only passed my math class because the teacher had been a programmer before teaching, and if I could write a good program that proved I understood the concept he'd give me a passing grade for the homework assignment.
kyanical
15.04.2023High level maths….?!?? I used one of these in prealg
ZipplyZane
15.04.2023I was never able to afford my own calculator, and used the ones borrowed from school. And while I returned the calculator, I did wind up "stealing" the cable that let me transfer games. I always felt bad about that.
I also introduced the school to VTI, a TI-calculator emulator.
Patch
14.04.2023Great video! But I think there is an important thing to add as we look to the future. Desmos is far, far more than a simple calculator emulator; it is more like the next step in the evolution of math education.
It is much faster than the TI calculators at nearly every single feature. It is in full color, while most TI models are still stuck in black and white. And it's a free service, unlike the TI calculators which are locked behind a $100 price tag.
In fact there are secure versions of the software that will (likely) be allowed on the SAT in the next couple of years. It's really only a matter of time until it totally supplants the TI calculators for things like standardized tests.
Tomoko Kuroki
14.04.2023As a student still in college (soon to be out) my TI-84 CE is my baby. She's served me dutifully throughout college, as did my TI-84+ CSE and TI-84+ SE before that. I love it because it was always so powerful and unique as not only a tool for games, but effectively a mini computer. I'd spend hours bored in school with teachers looking out for smartphones playing whatever calculator games I wanted with them none the wiser. I'm currently trying to beat Link's Awakening DX with TIBoy, the CE Game Boy emulator. Thanks for making this and defending our right to calculator games.
haqua
14.04.2023Maybe introduction of chatgpt to the education system could be seen as an equivalent tool as the calculators back then.
DredlyLB
14.04.2023In the 90's, schools had to buy calculators because students couldn't' afford them (they were 100+$ back then for TI-81s). Texas Instruments gave MASSIVE discounts to schools, knowing that students would have to buy them as well for home use where they could charge the 100+ fee per unit and make crazy profits. – Basically Texas Instruments got a monopoly on the market by exploiting the school's willingness to get free stuff, and they HEAVILY fought everyone else off to keep it. This is the same way Glock (handguns) took over the US Market as well, by giving free handguns to police, knowing the non-cops would buy it too.
Michael Hannell
14.04.2023Had a teacher that before each test she would erase any unapproved program before a test and she was fat at doing it on our ti83+. But I would write any formulas on the inside of the cover to my ti83+ in pencil and she never noticed bc I would just smug it away with my fingers
olav Santiago
14.04.2023An ester egg of geek, good video with good community interaction. 10/10
Quinnobi 42
14.04.2023I'm perhaps just young enough that I never had to use a TI 84 or similar for any of my classes. I've generally used desmos or some other online calculator when I need to do graphing and otherwise just stuck with an HP scientific calculator that I have. So for that reason I didn't even know calculator games were a thing until I saw this video. I actually have a graphing calculator that my dad gave me from when he was in college, I think, which is an HP 49g+, which I never really learned how to use, because, again, I never needed to use it specifically.
Ludwig234
14.04.2023This channel is really high quality. Great editing, research, presenting, and everything else. Just wanted too say that 🙂
TheNovelNovelist
14.04.2023I LOVED calculator games when I was in high school! That said, I'm not only surprised the games are still around…I'm surprised the calculators themselves are. Nostalgia aside, surely there's an iPhone/Android app that people can get to perform ALL the functions of a graphing calculator on their phones. Why are we making families shell out all this money for such specialized devices? Why are we building them and causing all this e-waste? To be frank, there's very little reason for the vast majority of calculators, cameras, and timers to still exist. Let's not waste the money and resources on these standalone devices when a modern smartphone can get the job done.
Eric Carabetta
14.04.2023I bought my TI-83 Plus new, 23 years ago, and it's the oldest thing I own. Lol.
QuintusAntonious
13.04.2023Programming calculators and the perception that it is illegal in school to do so is a perfect example of how school systems are largely meant to be conformity machines rather than youth development centers. I was one of those programmers, as were some of my friends, and exactly what you are saying was true for us too–it was almost like drug dealing, and maybe even more secretive. You could pretty easily figure out who was selling drugs in school, but finding out who had the best calculator programs was extremely hard (this is late 90s, early 00s). But, as an older man now, I look back and realize that if a kid was struggling or bored in math or chemistry and had the gumption to learn a programming language to make a work around or make work easier, it should have been rewarded and developed in a healthy way rather than pushed under a table. I'm a comfortable, relatively well-adjusted adult now, but I do wonder what or who I might have been had my teachers seen my creativity and drive and rewarded it instead of encouraging me to hide it for the sake of blending into a crowd. What if instead of giving me four study halls senior year where I did nothing but make games on my TI-83 because I was bored, someone had recognized this talent and helped me use that idle time to develop it further? I'm happy with my life, but if I ever had kids, I think I'd want to encourage them in a way I wasn't.
Aaron Roth
13.04.2023I couldn't even begin to count the number of people I shared Fruit Ninja or Portal Prelude with on the calculator. Every exam we had once classmates were finished was filled with the KRLRKLLKL of "swiping" across the keys to slice the fruit. Having access to the program editor was a huge reason I got into the embedded software and hardware career path that I'm on today.
Nick Raven
13.04.2023I was a class of 2002 kid and I never got into any of the calculator stuff. My dad lent me his 80s-era calculator that could do what we needed in class, but I never got to play Drug Wars or get into any kind of dev scene. Oh, the best intentions of mice and men…
KyleK
13.04.2023I came to the comments to post what I thought was a journey unique to me. I grew up in group homes and my TI-83+ that the school bought for me was the first real exposure I had to any technology other than game consoles. Being able to view the source code for existing programs piqued my interest and I taught myself how to make my own. I too ended up taking these skills to the Access/Excel VBA world when I was 20 and even though I never went to college, am now a Senior Software Engineer about to turn 37. I got laid off in January and have been telling this "origin story" in every interview. I never knew so many people were inspired by their calculator the way that I was. I don't feel as alone as I did before reading these comments. I hope the technology of today is still intriguing the minds of students and helping them enter computer science with the same curiosity that I, and apparently many others, had.
Tim Ogul
13.04.2023I loved my calc in the late 90s, but the only games we had there were Snake, and something like an endless runner involving a ball that would move constantly away from the camera and could jump over pits in the road.
Margaret Gregory
13.04.2023i had a sweet TI-84 Plus CE full-color graphing calculator loaded up with tetris, flappy bird, and my personal favorite, snake. even though i had an iphone that could load all these games in much higher quality, there was something about playing games on my calculator that felt cool (in a nerdy AP calc way) and novel. makes me want to dig out that calculator and play tetris.
SEVENB4TIME
13.04.2023My dad gave me a ti-92 plus for my 8th grade algebra 1 honors class and I absolutely loved it. I then read the entire manual for how to use it and fell in love with the ti calculator space and was the coolest kid because I could teach everyone to cheat with their calculators and play games on them.
Edit: Everyone loved my Ti-92, they called it the fish finder and if you do not know what this calculator looks like I would recommend you search it up.
Matthew Price
13.04.2023The first time that I was exposed to calculator games was in speech and debate class in high-school, roughly 2005, when someone showed me that they could play Pokémon red on their calculator.
This video makes me want to learn how to get some Pokémon action going on my old calculator.
Josey Bryant
13.04.2023Mind blown, Phil. I just thought you could spell dirty words on them.
Like Bot
13.04.2023Crikey. Long way since I graduated in '80. Advanced Math and none of us had a graphing calculator. We had wee little gadgets that could do a lot, most of us rocked programmable calculators… but that was 20 years too early for the real fun.
ASMR People
11.04.2023I remember buying my TI-92 in 1996. Teacher thought it was just like the TI-85 or other calculators. The thing is however the TI-92 could do calculus. Let just say I did well in my calc class. 😂
Liam Aldrich
11.04.2023I recall commenting about "can it run DOOM?" on your community post about this. I'm still hopeful that we end up getting a video from you about it! Its a fascinating and massive topic that I think would be right up your alley to research.
Jay Ramsey
11.04.2023Do kids still need to buy graphing calculators in high school? Figure you could just do it all on your phone or a laptop these days.
Jay Ramsey
11.04.2023Shout-out to my old TI-84 Plus Silver. I wonder where it is.
Reina Sweet
11.04.2023Back in 2003, our high school Algebra II teacher loved to find practical projects for students instead of the usual math sheet homework. One assignment was: "make a small calculator program that demonstrates algebra or geometry principles. The program can be anything, get creative." Most students made something in basic and I remember most of the other students really enjoyed it.
I decided to do assembly for some reason (I blame some folks on IRC for the push) instead and made an analog clock. Though, it only kept time while the program was running, unfortunately.
Then later making a simplistic dungeon crawler as a personal project. Which got me into modding, emulation scene, custom mmo servers, small contract software engineering jobs, and eventually professional game development (for the last 12 years)!
misseli
11.04.2023Man I really missesd out by not asking my parents to buy me a TI-84 Plus calculator
Brian Chauvin
11.04.2023I had 18 busted graphing calculators donated to me when I graduated high school from my Calculus teacher. Along with a complete manual for them.
I managed to fix 7 of them on the trip back home, just corroded battery contacts. I later managed to fix another 5 of them.
But even after taking Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, and Advanced Placement Calculus 1 and 2 all under the same awesome teacher, I never once saw a single game on those calculators in person.
Honestly I feel like this entire thing was a neat niche of hacking, but I never once caught a fart of a wind of graphing calculators actually playing any games in class.
Danielle Anderson
11.04.2023It’s funny; I majored in math and minored in computer science. I’ve always wanted to make my own game. Yet I never played any games on my personal calculator—in fact, my calculator of choice was a scientific calculator, not a graphing calculator, because I wanted something light with a better user interface and never actually needed to graph anything for any of my college-level classes. It was a TI-30-something and it had a dedicated integral button—it wasn’t busied in a menu like on the TI-83, and I liked that easy access. Of course the big trade-off for that sleekness and low cost was absolutely no gaming capabilities whatsoever.
ki9
11.04.2023The first program I ever wrote was BASIC on a TI-89 I found in a dumpster and fixed. The program asked the user to input a really big number. If they entered anything less than 1000, it would make fun of their small number and ask again. Then when the number was bigger than 1000, it would say "Yo momma is so fat, she weighs n pounds", but with the big number from the user input. And then the program would exit and transform back into a schoolboy's calculator.
tony wilson
11.04.2023I would buy calculators from kids at the end of the school year for $20-30, and sell them back at the beginning of the next year for $60-80. Made a killing for a high school kid. I would install Mirage OS and Tetris, Mario, Blockdude, etc, as well as some custom written programs (quadratic formula solver and some built in geometry formulas, as well as one that faked a "Memory Cleared" screen).
radisrad
10.04.2023Nothing like manually copying a TI-82 game during lunch
Loveletters
10.04.2023Drugwar was so fun in the 90s ugh
Brianna Schuman
10.04.2023OG Ti-85 Gaymer here! I remember learning z80 assembly back in AP Calculus. I was also in AP Computer Science. Also, zshell 4lyfe!
R G
10.04.2023In the UK school and uni's don't use them, apart from certin specific college courses. (maybe becuase of this?). Was funny seeing one for the first time while I did study abroad for college in the US.
rudinah
10.04.2023Hey did you get any responses from non white men 😅
chesapeake
10.04.2023I had tetris on my calculator. Was great until the teacher asked why I was using the calculator in english class
viccie211
10.04.2023I played a lot of Mr. Worm, Tetris and other games, it was nice to have a timewaster always in your bag at school.
CamdenBloke
10.04.2023Okay, let me break this down. TI was a predominantly USA thing. Casio was a global thing. Basically like the metric system.
What I wrote from middle school to high school, I moved from TI to HP. I have a Casio graphing calculator, but I got it when I was in university, was using HP for my classes, and frankly I couldn't have the motivation to figure out how to properly use it. I'm sure it's very good at what it does, though.
CamdenBloke
10.04.2023Okay, did you all have a quadratic formula program on your calculator? Own up.