Steve Ouellette

The TI-Nspire device is the most sophisticated handheld graphing calculator available, allowing users to display and evaluate values symbolically, and to reuse the same equations across multiple applications. Because it’s so sophisticated, navigating its features can sometimes be confusing. It helps to know a variety of methods of achieving your aims with the device.

A few TI-Nspire products are worth mentioning here. The functionality of TI-Nspire Computer Software has been expanded in recent years to include the functionality of some of these other Texas Instruments products: TI-Nspire Computer Link Software: Now obsolete, this software enables your handheld to communicate with your computer and take screen shots directly from the handheld.

The Derivative, Integral, and Limit commands form the cornerstone of the Calculus submenu on the TI-Nspire CAS. Press [MENU]→Calculus→Derivative to open the Derivative command. A template containing two fields is pasted to the entry line. The current active field (as indicated by the blinking cursor) allows you to type the variable that you are finding the derivative with respect to.

The study of calculus should include a focus on the four key mathematical representations: algebraic, geometric, numeric, and verbal. The TI-Nspire Graphs application stands ready to take care of the geometric representation of calculus concepts. The Calculator application takes care of the algebraic piece, the Lists & Spreadsheet application takes care of the numeric piece, and the Notes application can take care of the verbal piece.

In the Calculus submenu of the TI-Nspire CAS, the CAS technology allows symbolic manipulation of algebraic expressions as well as numerical calculations just like in the Algebra submenu. The Derivative, Integral, and Limit commands form the cornerstone of the Calculus submenu. Here are some other items contained on the Calculus submenu that are worth mentioning, including a brief description of what they do: Tangent Line (& Normal Line): The syntax for this command is tangentLine(Expression, Variable, point).

Each time you perform a calculation, the result is stored to TI-Nspire’s local memory as the Ans variable. As a result, you can quickly access this stored variable and use it in subsequent calculations. Consider, for example, that you want to teach students how to evaluate an algebraic expression, such as 2x2 + 1 for x = –8.

If you’re familiar with the TI-84 graphing calculator, very large and very small results are often automatically put into scientific notation; that’s not necessarily true, however, when using TI-Nspire. Take, for example, the calculation (five-halves raised to the 74th power). The first screen shows the exact result as a stacked fraction in excruciating detail!

Sometimes when you're using a computer, you get into typing mode. Call it laziness if you want, but you might not really feel like accessing a symbol palette or catalog to insert the symbol or command that you need. Incidentally, the first seven shortcuts also work on the handheld: To enter π, type pi. To enter θ, type theta.

Shortcuts are available to help you quickly navigate documents on your TI-Nspire, allowing you to move from problem to problem, page to page, application to application, and even to change your view. They are as follows: Display previous page: Ctrl-◄ Display next page: Ctrl-► Switch between applications