iPod Touch: Better (and more colorful) Than a TI-83?

13 11 2008

TI calculators are so last year. Especially with the popular (and free) Graphing Calculator application being distributed in the App Store by Gabor Nagy. This app is, basically, a colorful TI calculator right on the iPod. Although it may not offer every functionality of a TI, the Graphic Calculator app allows for the most popular tasks, such as graphing up to five functions (all viewable on the same graph), tracing and plotting points, and a root finder. And to top it off, the graphs are colorful, and you can use the pinch-gesture to zoom and scroll the graph, much like when browsing the internet in Safari. You can even take a screenshot of the graph and email it to yourself. As of the most recent update, the following mathematical expressions are supported by Graphing Calculator:

Supported Expressions: log, log10, ln, exp, sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan, sinh, cosh, tanh, degrees to radians, radians to degrees, absolute value, square root.

There is no doubt that with innovative apps such as the Graphing Calculator being released, it won’t be long before not-so-new devices such as the TI calculators become outdated. As far as I know, we need more apps like this to give us an excuse to play with our iPods in class.