Calculators and Me

[phenomist]

This story's a long one, so bear with me

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It might sound a bit like bragging, but I am good at math. Competition math, to be precise. So the story goes...

5th grade, 2006-07
I started my competition with the AMC8. As a 5th grader, this was unheard of (back then. Now, you see 3rd graders and 4th graders qualifying for the USAMO only 3 years later). So, I took it.

I got a 24. The maximum score that you can get is a 25.

Now this set off a "warning bell" to the administration, and after some conferral with my parents, I was immediately fasttracked to Prealgebra, then a 7th grade class. I decided to take the AMC10 just because, scoring a 127.5, then moving onto the AIME, where I ended a (pretty good) streak. Did ARML for a bit, made SFBA's ARML B team.

This has nothing to do with calculators. It just sets the scene for later. (Yes, in retrospect, I didn't have a graphing calculator when the AMC's allowed graphing calculators... pretty bad, right?)

6th grade, 2007-08
The junior high school's Algebra 1 course (the class after Prealgebra) was full, so instead I went to the high school Algebra 2 course.

Algebra 2 => Graphing Calculator.

Thus, I got my first calculator. It was a TI-84+. I still have it, only that the screen's slightly dented. Anyways, I went through the entire competition thingy again, made USAMO, made ARML A team. SFBA A team won. ARML gives calculators to winning teams. In other words, I got a calculator.

The TI-nspire was a new cool gadget back then. Guess what we got? Exactly.

TI-84+ (September 2007)
TI-nspire (May 2008)

7th grade, 2008-09
Now in junior high school, graphing calculators were no longer a rare sight, as a new Algebra 2 class was instated to allow the 8th graders who skipped a single grade in math to not have to commute from school to school. Axe was not a programming language back then; Super Mario was the next best thing that existed back then. (Ztetris would probably rank third or so) People in our junior high school avidly created level packs. Seeing the existing level packs as too easy, we created new, harder, level packs. People like leafiness0 went on the technically-advanced route, creating several pixel-perfect regions in mere seconds. Other people like me decided to create levels that were more puzzle-like and esoteric in nature. I'll attach some levels from the era; as a guessing game, try to figure out which two levels are leafiness0's and which two levels are mine (Two more levels are included and are by other people from our school).

I made Mathcounts Nationals that year. => Calculator, also an TI-nspire.
Also, SFBA ARML team => calculator, yet another TI-nspire.

By now, I was unimpressed by the TI-nspire's OS: It was slow and clunky, lacked BASIC programming stuff, and its emulator was perhaps a third as fast as before. Hence I gave one TI-nspire away as a gift for usage of their house for temporary storage, and "auctioned" one TI-nspire off for $250 (in reality, the final winner was trolled by people who never intended on buying the calculator).

During ARML, one guy saw me playing on my calculator. He showed me this interesting TCG on his TI-84+ SE and the capabilities of Calcsys. When he also won a TI-nspire, he was like "Hm I wonder if I can make a raycaster out of this". He's one of your forum's members; his username is bwang.

(Yeah, I googled "TI-nspire raycaster" a while later during the summer, and stumbled upon this site , but didn't register because at the time I didn't have anything to say)

8th grade, 2009-10

Same old, same old. However two big changes: 1) All the calculator-toting people went to high school and 2) Algebra 2 and Geometry were swapped, Geometry not requiring calculators. Which meant that there weren't very many calculators in sight.

I really do not know what I did in 8th grade. Perhaps it was studying for some test, injecting propaganda for a certain student council member, or eating lunch as slowly as possible. Whatever it was, it usually wasn't graphing-calculator related.

National Science Bowl 3rd place => TI84+ SE, which I use very often now.
ARML => TI-nspire CAS, which I keep
Mathcounts => TI-nspire 2.0, which I gave away
9th grade, 2010-now
Super Mario became popular again. Also, due to relaxed restrictions, so did iPhone/iTouch games. I found some games and injected them into the calculator-playing realm, and, like a virus, it spread. In particular, I spread Geometry Wars and Tetris Marathon (You're welcome, Brian Coventry!). leafiness0 spread Space Dash and Cube Runner, so he's obviously a squidgetx fan. Anyways, we had the same stats class, and we decided to compete against each other in small programming contests. We started with a random letter generation program. It had to automatically scroll down each step.
My code was this (yeah, it's pretty bad)

Code: [Select]

"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ->Str1
ClrHome
Disp "","","","","","","
For(A,1,7
For(B,1,16
Output(A,B,sub(Str1,randInt(1,26),1
End
End
While 1
For(A,1,16
Output(8,A,sub(Str1,randInt(1,26),1
End
Disp "
End

Then leafiness0 discovered Axe. So he won.

I make Tron on BASIC. He goes off making Axe Tron and comes back with a product that's 20x faster.

At this point, I decided to give Axe a try. The new syntax was fairly overwhelming, and the most I could make was a skyscraper-making diversion. Looks like calculator programming's out of my scope now.

Then, leafiness0 contacted me regarding a new game he was making, Graviter. He told me to make some levels. I did.

After three complete rebuilds, each with a brand-new engine, I've been trying to make levels on new parameters each time. First I had to make it 18x12, then I could make it any size, and then I had to make it 18x12 again. Now he's showing me new mechanics (which I'm not at liberty to say right now) and I have to adapt my levels to satisfy those, etc.

Pretty annoying how his requirements change every week or so, but it's pretty satisfying when I see a level of mine in his game

And that's how the story ends. So far. (By the way, I'm expecting at least another TI-nspire... maybe a CX?)

[DJ Omnimaga]

I'm glad to see you around on the forums and nice to see you won some competitions.

Small correction, though: the raycasting engine for the TI-Nspire was made during Summer 2010.

As for calc suggestions, maybe you could get a Casio Prizm? It seems like it's gonna be done hacking before the CX, although it got less RAM.

[phenomist]

lol, I'm on a free budget. Everything after the first calculator was not bought.

So, if these competitions offer Casio Prizms, I'll get a Prizm. More likely are they going to give me a TI-nspire CX though.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Oh ok I see. And yeah I bet they'll give a TI calc.

[Binder News]

OOOhhhhh. Fun. I did math counts once. I was in 6th grade. I got bored of it and went into programming instead . And now I do more on my computer than calc. But oh well. Anyways, I stopped paying attention in Honors Alg2 like the 2nd quarter. BORING AS HELL. I just read programming books and get 140,000 on Tetris Marathon instead. My teacher gets annoyed but can't complain as I have an A in the class.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Wow 140000? How long does it take to reach such score?

[phenomist]

Interesting, Tetris Marathon is. I believe scores of 140000 would be around Level 9-10 (Read: 10 minutes?). In our school, I was the first to finish level 15 (and win the game at 850k, around 20 minutes). leafiness0 subsequently broke 1 million, due to what I believe is a prudent use of force-drops and tetrises.

[leafy]

Actually I would say phenomist is a terrible liar, but he is awesomely good at math.
Many of his facts of me are misrepresented We both made BASIC random letter generators. Mine was initially faster by a small amount, but he soon made an even better one. Later, I made an assembly one that I never ended up showing him that stripped his axe generator by a small margin.
And I terrorize him in stats class, of which he underrepresents on this forum (I've never heard him say so many good things about me IRL xD)
Also I maintain that I am better at videogames than he is.
Also calculators are part of the reason i am failing at stats at the moment and why I took a hiatus from Graviter.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Lol ok, I hope you're still kinda friends, though.

Don't let calc stuff hurt your grades, though. Just don't quit completely, lol.

[leafy]

Duh we're friends, although phenomist maintains otherwise xD

[DJ Omnimaga]

Lol ok.

I just remember some forum users who had IRL people at school that wanted to join too, but they didn't get along well. X.x

[Stefan Bauwens]

Welcome to omnimaga.
If you're sick of a calc(for example the nspire) you may give it to me as a present

[yunhua98]

wow, so you've met bwang too?

you've gotta the most connected member to join Omni  .

[ztrumpet]

Wow, phenomist, that's phenomenal.  Congrats on all of the Math stuff.

That's pretty connected.  It's cool how you got to meet bwang.

Good luck with more programing endeavors.  Have you made any games yourself, or have you just stuck with making levels?

[Xeda112358]

Wow, I'm impressed! That is a lot of calcs :P Maybe you can tutor me in math XD I am only pulling maybe a C in my classes ._.