HP Prime: Home/CAS? Message #1 Posted by Alasdair McAndrew on 23 Nov 2013, 10:34 p.m.
I think a lot of my difficulties with the HP Prime are due to the use of the Home and CAS views. The menus are the same in both, but some items (such as MAKELIST) seem only to work in Home view. Then there's the problem of defining a function (which must be done in CAS view) and plotting both it and its derivative. This requires a certain amount of juggling, since the Functions app, as I understand it, treats functions as numerical objects, and not as symbolic ones.
For example, I can define "f:= (x) -> (x^3-x^2)" in CAS, and to plot it, I can enter "F1(X) = f('X')" in the Functions list. But if I try to put a derivative (of either f or of F1) in F2, any of these happens: (1) I get an error "Error: Invalid Object", (2) the plot shows only the function and not the derivative, (3) the plot shows the derivative as the straight line y=0, (4) the calculator spontaneously reboots.
In fact, I find the Home/CAS view more annoying than useful, simply because moving things from one to the other is non-trivial. (If you define a function f(x) in CAS, then you have to type Shift-Alpha-F to obtain a lower-case f in Home view.) In my view a calculator, if it is to be used for education, should be as simple as possible, and Home/CAS seems to me to complicate things.
Am I alone in this, or has the rest of the world embraced this Home/CAS dichotomy?
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