This course is meant for college students that own, or think of buying a Texas Instruments calculator with Computer Algebra System (CAS), except for TI-Nspire CAS:

• Voyage™ 200;
• TI-89 Titanium;
• TI-92 Plus;
• TI-89.

Its goal is to explore, as thoroughly as possible its capabilities in a practical way, aimed at the curricula of the most common unversity subjects.

The course can be organized in three different models:

• 3 hour demonstration
• 12 hour course (4 sessions of 3h each)
• 20 hour course (6 sessions of 3h and 3h30)

Each session of the 12 hour and 20 hour courses is mostly practical, with participants solving several exercises on the calculator, as we explore more and more tools. In a 3 hour demonstration the same topics are ilustrated with examples but without the practical component.

The contents are, naturally, different depending on the course length, but also according to the participant's field of study. As such, in a class made up of mainly engineering and exact sciences students, more emphasis is given to such subjects as integral calculus, complex analisys, differential equations, etc. If the class has mostly social sciences or economics students, the areas more thoroughly explored are the financial calculus and statistics, being calculus taught in a lighter version.

Contents:

1. Introduction; information about the keyboard and cursor, basic navigation, menu structure; Main menu and Flash applications available;
2. Syntax of commands, precision of calculations; scientific notation; equation solving, factorization expressions; expansion of trigonometric fórmulas¹;
3. Matrices: determinants, transpose, inverse, systems of linear equations; eigenvalues and eigenvectors¹;
4. Differential and integral calculus: integrals, derivatives, limites and series; differential equations and power series¹;
5. Data and statistics: inserting and manipulating data, statistical calculations, regressions; probability distributions, confidence intervals and hypothesis testing.
6. Financial calculus: time value of money, internal rate of return, net present value, interest, depreciations²; constantes and unit conversion¹;
7. Defining and manipulating graphics; determining minima, maxima and roots in graphics, parametric and scatter plots, regression equations; graphs of differential equations and 3D¹;
8. Editing text; communications link, file transfer and software updates.

In shorter courses some topics might be explored in a lighter way or might even be suppressed.

Items marked with¹ will only be mentioned in classes where most participants are engineering or exact sciences students. On the other hand, items marked with ² will be explored only in classes composed mainly by social sciences or economics students.

How to attend?

Usually I perform training courses only in Portugal. If, however, you'd like to have this course at your school, even in a foreign country, have your school or your students association contact me to see if it can be arranged.