A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
You only need a graphing calculator because you're not allowed to use wolfram alpha, desmos, or Matlab. Since you're mandated to use graphing calculators, (sometimes even specific models) there's no incentive to make them cheaper or better since you need to buy them anyway.
Its not just the demand, its also monopoly or duopoly of suppliers. These suppliers prevented competition by making sure they are the only ones allowed by students to use.
When I was in school, it was always specific models. They had to limit it to one brand and like 2-3 known good models to prevent the ones that could solve equations.
So there's no reason for TI to ever lower prices.
The incentive Is supposed to be competition among manufacturers, something is preventing that
Schools have lists of approved models for standardized test taking. If students (the largest market) can't use your calculator, making one is probably not going to be profitable.
Iirc, theyre the last products still using a z80, which was launched in the seventies. Keeping an entire chip fab open for one thing isnt cheap, even if its for something like a z80
At the same time, there's no reason why they couldn't upgrade to something else. You can do everything a graph calculator does on your cellphone using websites...
You say that, but its standardized. It needs to be exactly the same if only to keep everyone on a level playing field
What? Should we standardize computers so everyone has the same processing power?
For something like the SAT, yeah, youd want everyone on as level a playing field as possible