The No.1 Choice Secondhand For A-Level and IB
Taking everything into account: ease of use, features, build quality, display clarity, suitability for school/college use, nothing else comes near. Most owners don't even scratch the surface.
Incredibly easy to use: just think about where you'd expect the facility to be and how you'd expect to use it, and there it is!
Intersection points, maxima, minima, gradients and areas under curves are found in seconds. Curves may be expressed parametrically or in polar form, when needed. Virtually every advanced statistical function is built-in, including Chi-Squared GOF, t- tests (both 1- and 2-sample), ANOVA and all the basic functions as well.
Programming is dead easy (the language is similar to BASIC) and with every text character and mathematical symbol available, together with the full range of programming commands you'd expect, you can write your own software to cover almost anything not built in - incredible!
If that's not enough, you upgraded the operating system to give it a natural display, spreadsheet, document facility and the ability to take powerful add on apps (free of charge) which give it CAS facilities.
The SolveN facility solves many types of equation, as presented (even trig equations with multiple angles, e.g. sin2x, and trig functions raised to a power, e.g. (tanx)^2). It even gives exact solutions to them, in terms of multiples of pi, where applicable.
Overall, this calculator is so powerful that its use should be banned in GCE exams, but in fact it's approved! Its raison d'etre is to get you through the exam with flying colours, and in this respect, it excels. There are calculators like the TI NSpire CX CAS, that leave it for dead in terms of capability, but CAS calculators are banned for GCSE, most A-Levels, and also by a lot of universities as well. The TI is also much more difficult to use. The syntax for the commands isn't something you can just deduce based on logic. Assuming it was allowed in an A-level Maths exam; in many instances, its extra facilities wouldn't compensate for it being slower to use. While you're trying to figure out how to do a t-test, or an hypothesis testing on a binomial distribution, the fx9750gii owner has got the answer and is on their way to the next question! There'll never be a better operating system to use, in my opinion!
Anything negative to say? Yes, but fortunately it's fairly trivial, as long as you're aware of the situation.
When plotting parametric curves, you need to go into 'set-up' and change the default setting to allow negative values of the parameter (t) to be used, as well as positive values. If you don't, a whole branch of curve may be go missing, and you'll loose marks.
You can't plot functions directly expressed in both x and y; they must expressed only in terms of one variable. This means that if you want to plot a circle and a straight line, the circle must be expressed parametrically, as the Cartesian form in x and y can't be used. Fortunately, when plotting more than one graph, you don't have to have all of them expressed in the same form; so the straight line can be entered in Cartesian form, whilst the circle is expressed parametrically.
Any other problems? Often circles look eleptical rather than circular, due to the default x and y scales. Not a major problem; just experiment with 'set up' and adjust the settings before sitting the exam. Graphs plotted using polar functions also suffer similar distortions, and the same comment applies!
The fx9750gii was launched over 11 years ago, and almost from 'day 1' owners have complained about the lack of a natural display as standard, and have resorted to upgrading the operating to the fx9860gii, by ROM flashing. Why Casio didn't address this issue by giving the consumer what they wanted, is a mystery! It may be out of fear of loosing sales of the fx9860gii as a consequence, but that may not have happened because it's sturdier, has a bigger display panel, and the SD versions of it offer memory expansion via SD cards. Whatever the reason, for a calculator that's almost universally adopted by college students, both here and overseas, it's disgusting that Casio haven't put this right!
Finally, if you're buying new, do beware that Casio's new offering: the Graph 35+EII Phython costs about the same, but is better even than the fx9860GII in terms of specifications. Natural display as standard, I.B. exam compliant, twice the internal memory, programmable in BASIC and Phython, connects directly to a PC without FA124 software , and supplied with leads worth £20. A new fx9750GII is therefore not worth paying more than £45 for, at the very most. Also, do remember, that upgrading the o.s. of the fx9750GII, invalidates the warrantee, and can write it off if you don't follow the correct procedure.
Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned