Calculator for A'level maths

[minesawine]

Hello. Does any maths teacher or parent know what calculator I should buy. I had heard that my DS's GCSE Casio is not advanced enough for A'levels. I saw a CASIO FX-991EX CLASSWIZ on the internet but don't want to buy anything wrong. The school is no help.

Grateful for any advice.

This is from our schools Maths' page re calculators:

For all years we recommend the:
Casio fx-83GT Plus, costing £7.09, plus £0.75 for engraving
or the:
Casio fx-991ES Plus, costing £17.24 including engraving
Both are excellent calculators, but the fx-991ES Plus includes a number of helpful additional functions over and above the fx-83T Plus that many students find helpful.

For those students in the sixth form (and potentially Year 11 Additional Mathematics students) who want to purchase a graphical calculator as an optional extra (it is not essential, but some students find it helpful), the most used graphical calculator at the (school's name) is:
Casio fx-9750GII, costing £57.50, plus £0.75 for engraving

CASIO FX-991EX CLASSWIZ

That's the one my son's 6th form college recommend. I need to buy one!

I'm a maths teacher and I've just bought the one you mentioned, the Classwiz one, because it looks good and I lost the last one I had at school last term . The new A Levels just starting next month will use calculators more than the old syllabus did and this looks up to the job.

The 991ES one mentioned in the previous post was the other one I considered, actually, and it's not bad either: up to the job of A Level, but does a little less than the Classwiz.

Just seen Classwiz in Tesco for 25.00

Message we have had from school for A Level re calculator
The model needed is Casio fx-991 EX. The last two letters EX have to be there for A Level

Yes you need the casio 991 EX Classwiz. It has the values of the cumulative binomial probability distribution stored in it and as the tables will no longer be provided at A-level (they used to be in the formula booklet), you MUST have a calculator that does this.
The old casios, even the 991 ES aren't good enough anymore.

Thank you all, and whilst I could never in a million years even attempt to understand what cumulative binomial probability distribution means, it is good to know that I have now bought the right thing.

Classwiz is a great calculator. For A-Level it does help to have a graphics calculator too. The Casio FX CG50 is expensive but worth the money. I bought mine for £100 but it seems to be at least £120 currently.

Thanks Bojo. Wow - £120 is very expensive. Will he be at a disadvantage if he doesn't have a graphics calculator?

Which calculator for further maths?

No, he won't be at a disadvantage. Some students love them but most dont buy one. Some schools insist on them but this can be down to the teaching style.

Class wiz is essential, hold off the graphical for now. He could always buy one second hand from the year above at the end of their exams if he wants.

Same for further maths. My Y 12 further maths group all bought class wiz for their exams this year and loved them. They spent 5 mins every lesson showing each other how to do the more complicated things.

A graphics calculator is not necessary but it certainly does convey an advantage. For Further Maths that advantage is greater. I have not been a huge advocate of them as the display on the older models is not great and they are quite tiresome to use. However the CG50 is excellent and it has other functionality besides graph plotting. It is permitted in exams. However, there is certainly no need to rush out and buy one, whereas the classwiz is really essential.

Sorry for silly questions, but I was looking at one of "graphic" calculator online, and it cost nearly £600. . Very similar looking "graphing calculator was less than 1/10 of the price. What's so different between them?

I believe that pupils now have to have a graphics calculator for the new A level, so all Y 12s. They do cost around £120 each.

No they don't. The classwiz at under £30 is fine.

irvine graphic/graphing calculator are interchangeable terms, there's no difference. I suspect you were looking at a high-end programmable calculator with all sorts of functions for serious mathematicians.

Dd has a Casio fx-991EX

Noble, I just looked up the one Sal Khan uses on his lessons on Khan academy. And two similar named ones came up, one called graphics with shocking price, and one called graphing with reasonable price. ((Texas Instruments TI 85 graphics/TI 85 graphing)
So I was a bit curious about difference.
I definitely don't need one that has way too many function I can't use.
( I am now doing maths myself, and needed to buy something that has little bit more than everyday use one.)

I will go for classwizz. Thank you.

irvine not sure what sort of maths you're doing, but the Wolfram Alpha app does all sorts of maths including complex integration and differentiation. If you pay for the app (it's really cheap) it then gives you a step by step breakdown of how it gets the answer.

At the moment I am using online scientific calculator, but it gets a bit annoying. I am doing [https://www.khanacademy.org/math/math3 mathematicsIII] at the moment.

www.khanacademy.org/math/math3