zlacker

>>lewisf+(OP)
You don't need a graphic calculator for high school. Hundreds of millions of kids in China and India graduate without one and do just fine. Differential calculus is now 400+ years old and generations of humans have done fine without a graphing calculator.

>>shriph+jQ
Yes, but the tests effectively require them. For AP Calc there are what I called the "definite integral button" questions where you just have to identify that an integral is needed and plug in to your calculator, if you did it by hand you would take more than the intended time for that problem and get behind. Same for AP Stats, there wouldn't be time to run all the averages and deviations by hand. It's testing whether you know how to use the tool/what to tell your calculator to do. There's a calc inactive section on Calc that is basically what you are saying, but without the calc active section the scores would probably go way down.

>>morphe+hS
My experience with AP Stats was that it was more like "AP Calculator" because a good 80% of the test was about entering numbers into my TI84's lists and then picking the right stats functions to run. My textbook had more calculator tutorial than theory.

>>eat_ve+jT
I mean, that's a pretty accurate description of Statistics as a field.

>>excali+QY
For statistics, that's okay, though. The whole point of statistics is doing stuff with 20, 50, 100 or more item datasets and trying to make sense of them.

For calculus, that's not so good. To have any intuition about calculus you need to be really proficient at algebra and graphing--by hand.

When you apply calculus in engineering and physics, sure, use the calculator. But when it's just calc, it really needs to be structured to be able to be done by hand.