Books and Articles by 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.

You have two ways to view a two-variable data plot in the TI-Nspire Data & Statistics application: as an x-y scatter plot or as an x-y line plot. The x-y line plot is identical to the scatter plot except that adjacent points on a scatter plot are joined with a segment. Press [MENU]→Plot Type→XY Line Plot to switch to an x-y line plot.

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.

In the TI-Nspire Notes application, you can evaluate expressions using interactive math boxes. Press [MENU]→Insert→Math Box to type a mathematical expression in the TI-Nspire Notes application. Alternatively, press the shortcut key sequence [CTRL][M] to access the Math Box option. Pressing some keys, such as [10x], automatically opens a math expression box.

This tool is easy to use! If you want to get a file from your computer to your TI-Nspire handheld (or vice versa), you can use the last tab in the Documents Toolbox, Content Explorer. Connect your handheld to your computer using a USB–to–mini-USB cable. Almost immediately, the Handheld File browser, located in the lower half of the Content Explorer panel, will recognize your handheld with an icon.

You can print the contents of a TI-Nspire document. Choose File→Print and customize to fit your needs. Following are three items that you might like to customize when you print a TI-Nspire document: Select an option from the Print What field: Viewable Screen: Prints the viewable window with no scrolling. Print All: Prints any text or data that you have to scroll to see.

The last three icons on the Workspace toolbar of the TI-Nspire Computer Software are for adjusting the color of text, objects, and lines. These are easy tools to use, just highlight the text, object, or line and then click on the tool icon to change the color. The icon that looks like a paint can will highlight text with a background color.

You may wonder why you would ever use the TI-Nspire Graphs application to graph and analyze two-variable data. Here are two reasons why you may choose to use the Graphs application over the Data & Statistics application: Function graphing and analysis: Although the Data & Statistics application offers several tools to analyze graphed functions (for example, Graph Trace and Shade Under Function), the Graphs application offers several additional options not available in Data & Statistics.

TI-Nspire enables you to view the residual squares on a moveable line. Press [MENU]→Analyze→Residuals→Show Residual Squares to view the residual squares of a movable line. Each square has sides whose length equals the difference between the y-value of a given data point and the corresponding y-value on the movable line.