08/12/2016
Out shopping for calculators? Make sure you get the right one.
You don't have to spend more than $20. Expensive graphing calculators, unless specified by your school, are easily outclassed by free smartphone apps like Desmos. Also, scientific calculators with 4-line displays are much too involved for students below grade 12. See what happens when you press the "Pi" button. You want to see 3.14159... NOT the symbol.
On the lower end of the spectrum, many of the cheapest scientific calculators work "backwards". What this means is that to calculate the square root of 4 you would press 4, then "root". This gets extremely complicated when you are dealing with operations within operations as they all have to be done "backwards". The $3 dollarama calculator does this, as well as the cheaper Walmart models. The money you save here will cost you grades later. Dollar for point if you are lucky.
What you are looking for is a calculator where you would press "root" and then 4, like we think in our heads (root of 4, not 4's root). The two Casio calculators are great. The Texas Instruments calculator is Not recommended. Neither is the Casemate.
Sharp makes a calculator which sells at Staples for less than $11 which is all you need. The more expensive Sharp is too complicated.
For chemistry and physics I highly recommend the Casio fx-991ms because it has 40 scientific constants stored in its memory.
If you are taking data management, make sure your calculator does statistical functions (it will say it on the package) and DON'T throw away the instructions, whatever you do!
Whatever calculator you choose, use it and get accustomed to it well before the day of the test!