TI-Nspire For Dummies

I'm a real fan of the "Dummies" series. I've never read one that I'd not give at least a 3 or 4 star rating... 'till this one.My big, huge complaint? It's unreadable. My eyesight is not perfect - I use reading glasses. But the Nspire screen shots in this book are so tiny that I literally had to use a magnifying glass to read some of them!The book contains a wealth of information, but its sporadic, and not well explained. The authors use a method that would be ok to someone who already knew the Nspire or is a geek like me (I've used the TI-84 and the HP-50G, so the concepts were not foreign), but a novice would be totally lost using this book.The beautiful color pages in the middle are sexy as heck, but add no value to the book. It seems as though they were just stuck in there to hype the CX series of the Nspire.I bought the "clickpad" Nspire CAS because it was half the cost of the "touchpad" and a quarter of the "CX" series.This book mentioned the "clickpad" exactly once. (in a screenshot of its keypad). I understand this, but it still POed me, as it will the many people who are buying the Nspire "clickpad" at a bargain-basement price.I'm getting my money's worth out of this book only because I'm willing to play around with my new Nspire and try to figure out the author's poorly explained examples with magnifying glass in hand. And, its better than the TI documentation - though that's not saying much.One of the most useful sections of the book is "Part of Tens" - but most of that information I could have gotten from a google search.Flipping back through the book (which I've read cover-to-cover with my Nspire in hand), I feel I've been a bit too harsh in this review. I should have given it two stars....2/27/12Ok. So I've had my TI - Nspire (Clickpad) for six months now. Also this book. When I buy a book, and own it for six months or more, and actually use it... I tend to judge it by how misused the cover is, and how bookmarked the pages are, and how many annotations I've written in its pages. All these are good, by my measure... and this book passes that mark. I constantly refer to it about Nspire questions.The Nspire clickpad CAS leaves a lot to wish for. And this book left me having to figure out many things on my own. But I liked the clickpad so much that I ordered the CX CAS version from Amazon.Let me tell you a little bit about Amazon service. I ordered my NSpire CX CAS on a Friday afternoon, and it was delivered to my door the next day at 11:30. The logistics in that delivery just blow my mind. I'm a prime member, btw.The CX CAS (touchpad) is simply much more usable than the CAS clickpad. I teach calculus, and having a graph of a function, its first derivative and its second... and in color, is such a great teaching tool. Ti-Npire for Dummies really helps with this functionality.Would I buy this book? Absolutely! Would I buy a clickpad Nspire? Its a steal for $60. But you'll be left dreaming of the touchpad version of the calculator, which is much more expensive - but worth it. Teachers, buy the CAS version (only about $10 more). Students, you can't use the CAS version on the ACT... but get it anyway, if you plan on going on to college in engineering or such. You really don't need a calculator (or just a basic one) on the ACT or SAT. But you will need a good one next year at college.And anyone who buys an Npire... should buy TI-Nspire for Dummies. Take it from a real Dummy - this is a book you'll use over and over.(I still wish the screenshots were more readable, but I fixed that with annotations.)Great book, and, after using it for six months, I've changed my review to 5 stars!!!!!

I bought the book after being frustrated in my classroom in front of my students, and a quick online search brought me to a solution from this book that instantly solved the problem. Before my next class even began, I ordered a copy and began studying. The beauty of the TI-Nspire is that it works very sensibly...if you know what you're doing. The problem is that many of the most basic wonderful functions of the Nspire won't work at all without a little basic knowledge of how format what you ask the calculator to do...and much of this is not intuitive...especially for the beginner. The book is broken down into specific parts on how to work with various applications (Calculator, Graphs, Geometry, Lists & Spreadsheets, Data & Statistics, Notes, and Computer Software) while also including a section on how to set up the Nspire and work with documents. I also found the small appendix on how to program to be interesting, if not of great practical classroom use (for now). To get best use of the book, it's been beneficial for me to reread -- much more quickly this time -- from the beginning. As good as the book is, the material takes a while stick. I began as a beginner, but I would now call myself an intermediate user, and I am getting closer to being able to take advantage of the Nspire in some pretty advanced ways. I'm sincerely looking forward to using the Nspire more in the coming school year because of this book.

Bought the calculator for my jr high student, and thought this ought to be a good addition to the purchase. He has used the book numerous times to learn how to do different things he has not learned in school, and actually enjoys finding out more about it.The true dummy (me) has not used the book and probably won't, but the former dummy I bought it for has raised his level of knowledge about the calculator with this book, and it has done exactly what it was intended to do.Like all dummy books I have ever used, this one is well written, and basic use is laid down in the book very well.

This is a decent book with a few flaws that are driven by the Nspire platform itself.First the good:The text is clear,and many key sequences that shortcut operations on this machine are presented that are hard to find in the TI Documentation.The illustrations are good also, as sometimes that's the only way to demonstrate how operations really work.Now the bad:Previous users of the Ti-83, Ti-84, Ti-86, and Ti-89/Voyage series may be, in many ways confused with the Nspire, in spite of this book. Particularly so, will be the population of non-students, i.e., professional people. The Nspire is an attempt by TI to get deeply embedded in the education market, with kids able to do their homework on this machine, and then uploading it to their teacher for review. Without understanding this, it will be hard to fathom what in the world TI has done with this device. All of the Ti-Basic graphics commands from the earlier Ti's have been disabled. The reason is probably so kids can't write games for it (especially in class). This book doesn't cover this fact, or why this is so, which will confuse people doing upgrades from the earlier machines.Also, all work on these Nspire machines are arranged as 'problems', which have a certain 'format' not available (or needed) on any other calculator on the planet. This introduces extra keystrokes and procedures that makes the operation of this machine cumbersome for the non-student.It would be better if they just started the book with a short chapter on what was disabled and what was changed in this calculator relative to the older Ti's, in order to keep teachers happy, and why researchers and engineers might want to buy something else.Within these limitations, the book does a good job explaining a rather specialised product for the education market.