> I never used one once in my entire school curriculum, and don't feel like I suffered for it.
I'm glad someone else said this, because I wasn't going to admit to it. I got through 4 years of high school math and science, and four years as a CS major/math minor and I don't remember ever using anything other than the permutation/combination functions and some basic graphing. The TI-83 was much more important in getting me into programming than doing real math.
Creating programs to do the same steps over and over once I understood it was the biggest benefit I got out of my graphing calculator. However, having a larger screen with a scroll history was a close second, so even just using it as a standard scientific calculator with a large screen made it very useful to me.
My high school didn't require a graphing calculator though, and most of the class didn't have one as I recall.
I'm glad someone else said this, because I wasn't going to admit to it. I got through 4 years of high school math and science, and four years as a CS major/math minor and I don't remember ever using anything other than the permutation/combination functions and some basic graphing. The TI-83 was much more important in getting me into programming than doing real math.