<p>Somebody I know told me that Michigan Tech recommends a TI-89. What calculator should I have for U of M?</p>
<p>Probably depends on what you want to study. I have read that a ti-89 is nice to have for engineering students. I would say an 84 or an 89 would do just fine.</p>
<p>I’ll be an engineering student. What do you think about the TI-Nspire? I looked on their website, and this seems to be the newest one.</p>
<p>one thing u have to aware of is some of them do too much. im only in hs so im not sure where the line is drawn but i would ask the college</p>
<p>Ti-Nspire is the newest, but doesn’t really seem to add anything significant over the TI-89. You should go with either the TI-89 or something from the 83 series (83/83+/84/84 silver edition/etc). The biggest difference is that the TI-89 has a CAS (computer algebra system) built in, so it’s able to do symbolic manipulation (ie, it recognizes variables and can do operations in terms of variables. For example, on a TI-83 you can only numerically calculate the derivative of a given function. On a TI-89, if you ask it the derivative of x^2, and it will tell that it’s 2x. This makes the TI-89 much better for later classes (when you may forget how to take some integral/derivative), but might not be allowed in lower classes because it’s basically doing all the work for you. I believe for most of the intro math classes at Michigan, you’re not allowed to use a graphing calculator at all on exams, so there would be no disadvantage to getting an 89.</p>