Now available on iTunes: HP Prime Graphing Calculator iOS app

[dbbotkin]

(12-17-2015 05:19 PM)luisphysics Wrote:  You can get rid of the title bar.
Plus why would you knock on the fact that someone put that on the app. You know that was someone's idea, and they are likely very proud of it. I think it was nice.

As for these kick-a** calculators you speak about please point them out. They all fall short. I own a lot of calculators from the app store and honestly the interfaces was poorly developed. Either the functionality is very limited. Or their interface is like mathlab or mathematica. I don't want to write scripts on my phone! Why would I do that when I have 10 fingers I can put on a keyboard.

Where would this PRO calculator fall into?
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Let us break down how we solve problems in real life when it comes to calculations.

-My brain for easy math and super large exponentials calculators can't handle. (if you are finding bugs in your brain when trying to multiply Log(3.23)*PI because you are hiting precision issues you might want to get a calculator or a computer)

-Calculator for easy functions that need to be solved and where I can plot things very fast to get a nice intuitive feel of what is happening. Program some functions but nothing so complex that I am finding bugs in the implementations of the calculators software. (if you are finding bugs in the implementation such as precision issues you might want to go to a computer)

-Computers of various sizes for everything else. (if you find bugs fix them because you are probably an expert trying to solve a very hard problem or you are using a terrible code base, or you are hitting undefined behavior and you shouldn't do it)

I didn't mention pen and paper because it is symbolic and usually u don't plug in numbers until the end if you are doing things right. then you use one of the tehcniques above to get an actual number.

I'm not "knocking" anyone's idea and have been a huge fanboy for HP since the HP35 including a pilgrimage to Corvallis, OR when the calculator group was there back in the 80's. I also have a lot of calculators on my iPhone as well as owning several actual Primes and the WiFi connectivity kit for the classroom.

There has been a compromise in the Prime to support the "testing environment" mostly in American secondary education and the compromise has limited the functionality of the calculator for actual work or even education. (read my earlier posts FYI)

WiFi connectivity should enable data to be transferred from a computer to the Prime and data collected by the Prime should be accessible. The "testing compromise" has eliminated that functionality. It was there, but is no more. Now everything must flow through the Teacher's computer interface. That is a limitation that has no justification in the real world.

In addition to having the calculator and WiFi for use in an educational setting, I would like also to be able to get matrix data in and out more easily than the kludgy 'copy and paste' that is currently implemented in both the physical and virtual devices because being able to carry the calculator in one hand is a key feature for me.

Just for a comparison, I use an iOS program from TD Ameritrade on my iPhone. It gets real-time data from the internet and can present a complex graph in an instant using the data. This should be part of the functionality of a powerful and complex handheld calculator like the Prime, but it is not. Why? Not because it is impossible or even hard to accomplish--the reason for the limitation is driven by marketing, not science.

Perhaps the difference lies in that some (most?) users are calculating and plotting based on a formula and I am trying to extract a formula from raw data. The Prime is capable of both, but the former is easy and the latter made difficult by HP's intentional limitation. That, I don't like.