Back to School Decisions: Which Calculator Makes the Most Sense?

Yes - calculators are still needed in schools for multiple reasons - i.e. cost effectiveness, ease of use, ability for all students to have a technology tool in their hands, inability to use phones in schools, lack of devices for all students, and more. You will see calculators on those back-to-school lists, which leaves parents and students wondering what calculator makes the most sense? From type (four-function, scientific, graphing) to brand, to longevity (i.e. if I buy this for my middle school student, will they still be able to use it as they move into high school)?

The brand question is sort of a moot point in this blog - the answer is obviously Casio! As a former middle school and high school teacher, I used other brands for years due to ‘requirements’, but once I found Casio about 20 years ago, I never looked back and continue to recommend Casio calculators over any other brand, hands-down, for multiple reasons such as ease-of-use, cost, efficiency, and constant updates and improvements. 

If you are torn between a scientific vs. graphing calculator, or a color graphing calculator vs. a non-color graphing calculator, then you are concerned about cost and longevity. All three types of calculators are going to be useful from middle to high school, however if your student is going to need graphing capabilities (say in Algebra, Algebra II), then obviously a graphing calculator might be the better choice. Unless of course you have the fx-991CW, which is a scientific calculator BUT also, due to its’ QR functionality, has amazing graphing capabilities. Color vs. non-color is I think more a preference, though color graphing calculators have some added features since visualization is more enhanced. For the most part, functionality is similar with the fx-9750GIII and the fx-CG50 (color) graphing calculators.

I made a video to demonstrate each one of these calculators side-by-side using the same problem so that you can do a quick comparison. This way you can see the difference between color vs. no color, scientific vs. graphing, and graphing vs. graphing using the QR code on the fx-991CW vs. just the hand-held graphing. Hopefully this provides you with some insight as you make those back-to-school decisions. Here is the problem I used as my model:

Find the key points for this quadratic: -2x^2 -3x + 4 (min/max, roots, etc.)