inverse function command

[Joe Horn]

Just thinking out loud...

I see your point, and certainly agree on the educational value of technology, having taught high school math with HP calculators for decades. Perhaps my unspoken fear is the "slippery slope" of portable CAS systems, approaching the limit of voice recognition of every kind of problem and instant output of the solutions, requiring the user to know absolutely nothing. That would be a great tool in the field (!), but a TERRIBLE thing to teach with. No learning happens at all when the students have technology at hand which can do all their homework and take their tests for them, thus eliminating all incentive they may have to learn anything.

However, learning does happen in stages, so learning happens best when students have technology at hand which is optimized for learning exactly what it is that they are learning at that stage. Will somebody ever design a handheld which adapts itself to the student's current stage of math learning? Maybe. But nobody has done it yet.