176 points

If a kid is smart enough to figure this out and make it work for them, they’re gonna be fine…

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87 points

Yes, but the kids buying the modded devices may not be

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23 points

good. they will learn not to buy their way out of a problem at least.

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80 points

Back when we were doing quadratic equations; I wrote a program on my TI-84 that would ask which parts of the equation you already had, and would fill in the rest for you.

My teacher liked it so much he bought a transfer cable for those calculators so he could get a copy for himself. Then used to to grade tests.

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42 points

I did the same thing. It was allowed in general, with the correct thought, “if you can code it yourself, you know the content”

I had another “program” that would fail to run but that’s because I wrote notes into it. Doubt that was allowed.

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18 points

Here in NZ they do a factory reset on your calculator at the start of every exam.

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2 points

I did that but made it return success before it got to the notes. You had to scroll to get to the notes, but it looked innocuous before that.

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17 points

I could never remember the formula to calculate compound interest.

But I had no trouble writing a for loop.

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2 points

What always annoyed me was having to draw charts by hand. Just let me put the data in a computer for god’s sake, the rest of the working is there… I did actually write a python function for one of my assignments which was fine, but they told me not to do it for the exam.

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3 points

I made one to decompose polynomials it was very good because it showed all the steps it was literally just copy what’s on the calc to the page

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-3 points

So you didn’t get the transfer cable with your calculator? Smells fishy

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11 points

Issued by the school; I never owned it.

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8 points

you can code directly on the device, it’s just a PAIN to do compared to moving the files over

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8 points

As someone who was a kid who would do things like this to avoid putting in the work, no this kid will probably not be fine.

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108 points

Oof getting ChatGPT to help on a test is likely to lead to some wrong answers.

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32 points

Probably mostly correct answers though…

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34 points

You know what they say: C’s get degrees.

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14 points

“C’s get degrees, and here’s the tease: no one’s asking for transcripts, just expertise.”

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12 points
*

Idk, if there is one thing it does consistently well its standardized tests.

Not that it can be used in any non mathematical class and if teachers do actually pay attention.

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-6 points

Cept you can’t use any wifi models on any standardized test for this reason.

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16 points

It’s not a WiFi model, a custom module was hidden inside the calculator to provide the WiFi connection.

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82 points

Ok but calculators are only allowed in math class and if there’s one thing language models suck at, it’s doing basic math. Forget anything at least as complicated as algebra

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22 points

Time to build a wolfarm applet

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3 points

Dude, I was wondering why someone hadn’t done this the moment they discovered Ai was terrible at math. I would have imagine the crowds who deal with both would have some overlap at least.

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1 point

Wolfarm, the militant brother of WolframAlpha SCNR

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11 points

For me they weren’t allowed in Calc I, II, III, Alg I, II and Differential equations. Every other class pretty much required it.

if there’s one thing language models suck at, it’s doing basic math.

If you’re using a GPT 3.5 turbo level models, sure. Synthetic data is perfect for teaching LLMs, o1 will be good enough up to Calc III IMO, maybe even better.

The only thing I don’t like about this is that it uses a TI, yikes.

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11 points

LLMs do suck at math, if you look into it, the o1 models actually escape the LLM output and write a python function to calculate the output, I’ve been able to break their math functions by asking for functions that use math not in the standard Python library.

I know someone also wrote a wolfram integration to help solve LLMs math problems.

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4 points
*

Terrence Tao (one of the most famous and active mathematician) recently wrote his thoughts in Mastodon on o1 mathematical capabilities. Interesting read: https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/113132502735585408

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4 points

Wow that’s really clever actually. Basically using the library as digital scratch paper

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8 points

They let us use them for all my college math classes.

They really don’t help much at all if you don’t understand the math, and if you do understand, you don’t need the calculator most of the time.

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2 points

Don’t know about university math, but this applied to a lot of the stuff in my last years of school. Since we always had a part where you were required to solve everything without a calculator you had to be able to do everything without it. For algebra and Calculus it just meant that you were able to do the math more efficiently. For statistics the calculator was basically useless, since it didnt help you if you didnt knew what you had to do, what was basically the only hard part of it.

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2 points
*

That’s also what my upper level math courses were like in college. In high school and the first couple of years of college I got good use out of my graphing calculator, but after that I reached the point where all of its advanced features were no longer useful. I just ended up leaving it at home and brought my old TI-30 Solar for class for the occasional time I had to crunch some actual numbers.

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TI, yikes.

Yeah, well, TI has spent bucketloads of money bribing textbook publishers to only include instruction for their specific models so they are now the de facto standard in American schools. This is apparently legal.

Anyway, team Casio represent.

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3 points

Sorry, I’m an HP guy. I love their calculators, hate everything else they do, except their plotters maybe.

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3 points

This kid never took science

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3 points

You have an option not to take science?

Damn. Where I live the three main sciences were mandatory and they were all separate subjects

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1 point
*

You knew what I meant but chose to leave a Reddit-ass comment anyway

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1 point

They’re great at multiple choice when they’ve seen the test versions

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41 points

I used to store formulas in basic programs in my ti84 but they were never useful because I didn’t need help memorizig formulas

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16 points

I did the same, but it was helpful because I’m terrible at memorization.

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4 points

I just wrote programs that would solve the complicated multi step problems and show me the work.

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1 point

I wrote one that printed a fake “memory cleared” screen so I could keep my stored stuff saved even if the protectors wanted to see us wipe the storage.

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38 points

But can you still play Drug Wars?

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14 points

Has anyone ever beaten that game? Is it even possible?

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10 points
*

No one has beaten The Game, but it is possible. We just need to wait for the Pope to declare that it has come to an end

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8 points

Oh you fucker, its been over ten years. i just lost The Game.

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10 points
*

It’s possible to get to the last day and have a lot of money, which is your “score.” The world leaderboards have some ridiculous highscores on the remake called Dope Wars.

https://stevekola.tripod.com/dopewarsguide/id2.html

That is a strategy guide.

I have never managed to do it.

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2 points

I played whatever version was easily accessible on Ubuntu’s repository in 2009, and once managed to get a ton of bitches and effectively infinite money. I have no idea how I did it.

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5 points

The earliest exponention clicker game I ever discovered. Lost dozens of hours to ti83 drug wars

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