Assignment 1

Name: Husaninder Singh
Course: ENG 3060 – Technical Communications
Instr: Hillary Ward
Assignment 1 – Problems in Technology (TI-89)

Engineers are the people who put in their lives provide needs, facilities to the community to make our daily lives easier. If the technology itself becomes hard to use and difficult to understand the functionality, it will become a nightmare for a common person. In the end it all comes to the designer of the technology. The engineers should design the technology in such a way that it can be easy to use and understand. But it freaks me out when we get to see some things today which even engineering students find hard to use. TI 89 calculator is one of the best poorly designed example of technology.

It all started when I registered for Calculus 1 class. Our teacher required us to have a graphing calculator for that class. We were required at least a basic (TI83) but she recommended a better one so that we can use it in other future engineering classes. I ended up spending $160 on TI-89, which I think is really expensive for any student. But what makes me mad is that I would not be able to use this expensive calculator during exam. But we were able to use the calculator for homework assignments. I had experience of using graphing softwares like mathcad and casio calculators. But using this calculator to solve my problems was really a headache.

While working on an assignment I messed up the answers of a problem where we were given two functions and we were supposed to plot on calculator. I didn’t know I did something wrong till I got my assignment back. Teacher marked my problem wrong because the graphs were not correct according to the given equations. When I asked from the teacher about this problem she told me that I switched the two equations with their respective graphs because when we plot the graphs on the screen we cannot differentiate two graphs, because of one color screen and there is no difference in plotting texture of two graphs. In the end, the only solution is that we can not just rely on the calculator but on our intuitions or expectations of how the graph of each equation should look like and then guess the plot from the calculator screen.

Later in Calculus 2 class, our teacher allowed us to use graphing calculator in exams as well. In one of the exam we had to solve the matrix with an unknown element ‘X’. This calculation will result in symbolic answer, which means answer will not be a complete numeral but will have variable X in it. First of all I spent around 2-3 days learning how to do matrix calculations in this calculator. Then while solving the problem in exam was not that hard for me as I already learned how to do matrix calculations. But the answer to this problem was really big. Answer has 3X3 matrix with quadratic polynomials of X in each element. The answer was not viewable in one screen. I was looking at screen and could not understand anything. Later I figured out that what I was looking at were first four elements of the matrix. Now I had to figure out how to look for the other five elements of the answer. It was easy to view bottom two elements just by pressing ▼(down) key. Similarly I pressed ►(right) key to view three elements in third column. But surprisingly for some reason I was not able to view the third column just by pressing the right key. I tried a whole lot of things to view the third column but never figured it out. I kept trying to look for that third column for about 20 minutes, and there is no built in help provided in this calculator. I did not want to leave that answer just because I think it is just there and can not figure out how to see it. But it resulted in partial answer to one of my problems and I ran out of time for the last problem. It felt really bad when I had the answer but did not know how to look for it and I knew the last problem but did not have time to complete it only because of calculator.

Later during the final of Calculus 3 I thought I know almost everything which I should know for that final of that class. I finished my exam in time and did all the problems. I was all happy after the exam and was expecting A in that class. I was surprised to see A- on my transcript and decided to see my teacher. Teacher allowed me to take a look at my final and showed me where I did things wrong. I completely messed up one 30 point problem because we had to find the area under the curve and then use that area to calculate estimated cost of landscaping. I had no idea how I got the wrong answer to the area under curve. I recalled that I never used my calculator after that final exam. Therefore I decided to pull out my calculator from my bag to view the history of recent calculations. After looking at calculations I figured out that in the equation of curve I used x2 instead of x^2. I had no idea how I did that but eventually ended up with a wrong answer and a lower grade.

Next semester in my statistics class I figured out why I used x2 instead of x^2. Now I can see frequently that I am missing the digits within calculations. For example, 2+2 will show as 22. The reason behind was that the keys of my calculator were getting harder and harder to press maybe because of normal use or all that dust getting into keys from my bag pack. This improper functioning of keystrokes was getting worse day by day and I have to struggle pressing the keys of the calculator. I googled for the solution to this problem and even asked other people for it. One of the working solution, I figured out was to unscrew the panel of calculator and clean the dust in keypad. I came home after class one night and tried unscrewing the calculator from back. I was trying all my different kind of screw drivers but nothing worked. I ran to nearby Lowes to grab a suitable screw driver for that calculator. Now after coming back I started unscrewing it. Now I have all the screws out and still can not take the panel of. Then later figured out there is one more screw, which was covered under the sticker saying “Warranty void if removed.” My calculator was under extended warranty plan, therefore, I decided not to remove that sticker and call the manufacturer. I ended up getting an answer that this problem is not caused under normal use, and it would not be covered under warranty.

Another factor which makes an engineer feel inferior is the inferior design and body texture of the calculator. It looks like the body is made from recycled plastic in China. In other word, this calculator gives a feeling of not being cool to those people who work hard to make things more cool around us. Unlike 20th century fashion not only include clothes and hair styles but also the modern hi tech gadgets. TI 89 is a gadget but makes us feel that it is just a piece of technology we can use solely for studies and nothing else. It is not wrong to say that a person carrying TI 89 in his hands all the time will give an impression of a study geek rather than an intelligent tech person.