Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Ooh Cool Calculator Skill

Today at my math workshop, I learned some new-to-me calculator skills that I believe I'll use this year.

Let's say you want to compare 2 functions at various values. They don't need to be, but for ease sake here I'll assume the x values are integers, and the y values linear, say some geometric patterns where x represents the pattern number, and y represents the number of sides. In the main window type:

{1, 3, 7} and ENTER
This would mean: 1=1st pattern, 3=#sides for one shape in 1st pattern, and 7=#sides for 2nd shape in 1st pattern.

Then TYPE/GET
ANS + {1, 2, 6} and ENTER
This would mean you're adding 1 to the 1st number (1) in list, adding 2 to the 2nd number (3) in list, and adding 6 to the 3rd number (7) in list.

Now you can keep hitting ENTER, and you have a nice way of visualizing what pattern number you're at without keeping track of how many times you pushed ENTER, and what the 2 other functions are, so this list would look like:

{1,3,7}
{2,5,13}
{3,7,19}
{4,9,25}, etc.

Second skill: you know how sometimes you're populating L1 and L2 where L1 is just integers and L2 is some function of the integers? Well, in the past, I would just go to L1 and physically type in 1,2,3,4,5,... then type in the equation at the header of L2. Well. In your main window you can easily populate L1 by:

seq(x,x,1,100,1)--> L1

I guess it would only be quicker this way for large amounts of integers. "seq" is found under LIST>OPS.
The first value is your expression/function,
the 2nd value is the variable,
the 3rd value is where you want to start,
the 4th value is where you want to end, and
the 5th value is what you want to increment the input by.

Now the ironic thing would be if I "learned" this in the past, and just don't remember it because I haven't used it.

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