Re:Texas Instruments new TI-84 Plus CE Python graphing calcu...
by rtkwe on Monday August 02, 2021 @05:52PM
(#28043163)
> For more advanced students you could teach them to calculate even weird values like 70° using a few terms of the Maclaurin series for cosine:
You /can/ but by the the time that is introduced, which is usually college since we're talking calculus, you don't want to test basic trigonometry. The tests at that level are about something else not about the particular values of the basic trig functions. Personally once I got to calculus very few of the questions were about the numerical result of a function.
You can also just accept cos(70°) as a final answer without asking students push buttons on a calculator.
For more advanced students you could teach them to calculate even weird values like 70° using a few terms of the Maclaurin series for cosine:
cos(x) = 1 - x^2/2 + x^4/24 - x^6/720 + O(x^8)
But that's all beside the point. Mathematics education should focus on understanding and applying the concepts, not using technology. The educators' rationale that "students need to learn how to use technology" doesn't really hold water when it comes to calculators. It's far easier to teach someone with a degree in mathematics how to operate a calculator, having never used one, than it is for someone totally dependent on a calculator for even basic calculations to obtain a math degree.