What Can a Calculator Company Contribute to Mathematics Education?

Abstract

It is known that scientific calculator has a long history of development since it was available in the market in 1972. The scientific calculators have been developed with innovative new functionalities over the years. The end users of calculators (both scientific and graphics calculators) have been expanded from mainly civil engineers to students in middle, high schools and in universities. This implies that the focus and development of scientific calculators have been modified over the years. It is now necessary for a calculator company to seek teachers' opinions and feedbacks on a calculator's functionality before it is being launched. We can say nowadays, most calculators are "Inspired by Teachers" In this talk, author will use the "Natural Textbook Display" created by Casio as an example to demonstrate that this functionality is natural a feedback from mathematics teachers. A scientific calculator displays the formula and expression as seen on textbooks. In the mean time, some educators argue that current excessive functionality of a scientific calculator is not acceptable for math educators (for example, the functionalities of CAS, Geometry application and etc.) in some cases; especially for examination purpose. We will discuss these controversial issues and see how calculator company, like CASIO, handles these issues.