HP-48G Vs TI-89

When you reach a certain degree on your school study, the teacher may start to recommend you to have graphing calculator to further up your game because the problem will be more complicated. There are so many option on graphing calculator and you can choose based on various reason such as HP-48G vs TI-89. Both of them are graphing calculator with mainly the same capabilities but if you wonder which will be the best option, go check our article below to know more about them.

In this article, we are going to give you information about:
– Do you need a Graphing Calculator
– What are HP-48G and TI-89
– What HP-48G and TI-89 Look Like
– What HP-48G and TI-89 can offer to you
– HP-48G vs TI-89

Graphing Calculator
Students have different experience when they are in school, some of them may allowed or supported to use a graphing calculator and some may not because not all of them take the same class or lesson. For those who are learning math and reaching the stage where the question is more complex or hard, they will need them to quicken the learning process and broaden the visualization because just like the name, they are able to graph functions and not only for students they are equally helpful for teachers as well.

These type of calculators are coming with the same capabilities just like regular scientific calculator but additionally, they can graph equations, make function tables and solve the aforementioned equations. These operations are common when doing statistical analysis and even some calculus, depend on the class you are taking on.

There has been debates about the importance graphing calculator because even though it is common today and people who support it state that it can grant access to our children to more powerful mathematics, some critics are worry that it might hurt or makes them unable to master or hinder their fluency on the basic math and algorithm which is why, the usage of graphing calculator commonly only recommended after student reach a certain level where they already pass the basic math.

The benefit seems to be push forward by those advocates who see the chance of graphing calculator being able to help or even develop the student’s ability to expand the rational understanding so to put it simply, the student no longer focus in “how” but now shift to find the answer for “why”. This impact is very clear when Advanced Placement calculus program which starting to require a graphing calculator in 1955.

Prior to the year, calculus exam questions probed almost solely on the student’s ability to use the rules to find both of the derivatives and integrals of functions while after the year they start to move towards questions that probed for relational understanding.

About HP-48G
There are so many choice out there when you are looking about graphing calculator and even though they are mainly able to serve the same purpose, some of them may able to provide an additional feature or having more capabilities to support you with the calculating tasks. One of the most popular calculator brand is HP with their numerous amount of both scientific and graphing calculator available in the market. They may not the most well-known as a graphing calculator but still among the best.

They have several graphing calculator and one of them is the HP-48G which is included on the HP 48 series of graphing calculator that has been released in between 1990 until 2003 and in between the list of these good graphing calculators, the G series is in the middle because it is not coming with the line’s top featured like what you can get from the brother 48GX, but if you are interested on the unit, go check our previous article comparing both of them on HP 48G vs 48GX here.

HP-48G Design
From the design, just like many other graphing calculator that has been released decades ago, it is coming with an old look and standard key while the screen is still using the 131 x 64 pixel monochrome LCD that has 6 menu keys to select from a wide variety of menu items. Unlike the higher model 48GX, this calculator have no expandable memory so there is no slot to add another capacity on board. As for the input method, this calculator is using RPN.

HP-48G Features
Let’s talk about the stack use of HP-48G first, this calculator are normally displaying four levels with the numbers on the left and what we mean of level 3 is the level identified by 3 in the display. When you input a number in the calculator, they will be displayed at the command line at the bottom without the number and the stack then being pushed up while the number will stay constant. When an operation is being performed, those numbers will move to level 1 along with the operation process.

The result then, will be displayed as well on this level while if you want to swap level 1 and level 2 for arranging operands, the ← SWAP key is used while if you want to remove them, use the ← DROP or when clearing stack, use the CLEAR. The next capability of this calculator is saving constant on the unit for later use and to do that, put the constant you want on level 1 and the type ‘ and hold the α key down, then type the identifier begin with a letter. When you press α once, it will allows to enter one letter.

The next step is press STO to make the identifier appear in the VAR menu and when you need to recall this constant, just press the corresponding menu keys; you can use these constant in algebraic expressions because they are really named variables.

The current directories will be shown at the display in the left-hand corner with the route to HOME and if you want to make a new subdirectory inside, press →MEMORY and then soft key NEW. Move the highlight to the _DIRECTORY and press the CHK soft key. Move the highlight up and key in the name of the directory using α key then press the soft key OK to create a new directory. Another thing the HP-48G can do is dealing with complex numbers because they are treated as a structure that can be stored on one stack level.

As opposed to the older calculator model, this one can manipulate number using the +,-, x and / keys along with other keys like the root, square, powers, trig functions and others. When you need to evaluate a function repeatedly, you may want to define the function to take its argument from the stack and calculates it for more convenient and this calculator can do it for you without needing any programming because it works just like the built-in functions.

About TI-89
It is good to always have an option when looking for something because then we can compare them to see if one option can be better than the other which is why if you are interested in HP-48G then, you will need to check on the other option TI-89. This calculator is very popular and has been around since decades ago when first released in 1998 as one of the highest model in the house of Texas Instrument and they renew the model with 89 Titanium in 2004.

Uniquely, according to Wikipedia this model is the smaller version of the bulkier TI-92 but of course with limited keyboard and more compact screen as opposed to the mini-computer brother. As many tests start to let the students to use calculator , the company need to make a more compact hand-held calculator that can be carried everywhere easily and remove the QWERTY layout keyboard from the original calculator. Another benefit that makes it superior is it even coming with flash memory which is not available in original TI-92.

TI-89 Design
The model we are talking in this article is mainly for the Advanced or the original version. As you can see from the picture above, this calculator is coming with an old display and form, different from the one you can have in the Titanium unit. It is in size like any regular graphing calculator and has an LCD screen with 160 x 100 pixel with a fairly large amount of flash memory. If you ever use Texas Instrument calculator before, the layout will be the same with the numbers located in the middle.

TI-89 Features
What makes many Texas Instrument graphing calculator special or more preferable is because many of them is coming with the built-in algebra system or CAS which means that they can evaluate and simplify algebraic expression symbolically so the input you are typing will be displayed more pleasantly just like the one you can see on the books or how you usually write them down. This may not affect the capability to handle numbers but certainly useful to make it easier to use.

The next capability is it can deal with algebraic factoring of expression such as the partial fraction decomposition. The importance of this feature is you can use the calculator to provide an algorithm for computing antiderivative of rational function. It can also find the exact value of trigonometric because instead of giving you 0.866 for the (60o), they will give you square root 3 over 2. Solving equations for certain variable is also not a problem for TI-89 for the CAS can solve one variable in terms of others.

This mean it can solve systems of equations and in case of quadratic where there are more than one solutions, the calculator will return them all.

As for symbolic differentiation and integration, derivatives and definite integrals are going to be evaluated exactly if possible.

Another great thing about TI-89 is it is programmable just like many high-end graphing calculators out there and it is programmed in TI-BASIC so you can use PC to develop more complex program in Motorola 68000 assembly language or C and then translate them before copying into the calculator. Because the calculator is released in 1998, the program available since that time is already numerous covering math, science or even entertainment which means games can be played on this unit though it have no benefit on the main purpose side.

Just like what you may already know, because there are T-89 and Titanium model, the hardware version of these 2 will be different and for the original, the model will be 1.00 and 2.00 because the 3.00 and 4.00 are reserved for the newer Titanium. Depend on the one you got, the difference between the first two versions is on how the calculator handle display because the earliest version is said to have a video buffer that stores all the information available on the screen.

If you are interested on the newer version, the Titanium prominent difference is because it is coming with two times flash memory than the original and of course as a modern unit, it also have USB On-the-Go port for the convenient when you want to connect it to computer or to another Titanium calculator.

Comparison
Now, let’s compare HP-48G with TI-89. As a graphing calculator, both of them are capable of doing many similar things that a common graphing calculator can do but in our opinion, what set them apart from each other prominently is because TI-89 is coming with flash memory which is not available in the HP-48G. Another important difference is the processor because HP only use 3.64-4 MHz Yorke Saturn while TI use Motorola 68000 at 10 or 12 MHz which means it is quicker.

HP-48G Vs TI-89

Conclusion
All in all, both of them are a good option if you want to have a reliable graphing calculator. However, in case you want the one with more powerful capabilities, we will highly recommend you to pick the TI-89 because of the flash memory and more powerful processor.