Part 2. Precalculus and calculus

Part 1 of this book taught you general-purpose calculator skills: doing arithmetic, graphing functions, and working with variables, lists, and matrices. Part 2 will start you on a journey into more specialized skills, beginning with precalculus and calculus. In the three chapters in this part, you’ll learn three new types of graphing, as well as how you can draw and sketch over graphs. You’ll learn to work with imaginary and complex numbers, trigonometric functions, limits, and logarithms. You’ll compute integrals and derivatives, and you’ll discover the capabilities and limitations of your TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus’s calculus tools.

Chapter 5 starts with three new graphing modes: Parametric, Polar, and Sequence. We’ll look at a few examples of each graphing mode in action, from the practical to the pretty. You’ll explore recursion, the Fibonacci series, Lissajous curves, and more. This chapter will also show you how to draw on the graphscreen, either to annotate graphs, to draw diagrams, or just to doodle. You’ll see more precalculus tools in chapter 6. Working with real, complex, and imaginary numbers is presented first; you’ll then learn how to use trigonometric functions and examine the unit circle. Although your calculator doesn’t have a specific tool to find limits, I’ll show you how you can do so anyway. Chapter 6 concludes with logarithms and exponential functions.