Lists and Statistics

The last couple weeks we have been working through the list and statistics capabilities of the TI-84 and desmos.  Going into this unit I knew about the list and stats capabilities on my calculator, but not on desmos.  I learned that you can copy and paste data from excel onto desmos and use all sorts of commands to find the mean/median/mode/standard deviation etc.  I did learn that you can find the mean of a list by just putting in mean(L1).  Another really interesting thing you can do with the TI-84 is find random numbers.  You can find random integers and random decimals.  You can even multiply your random numbers by putting whichever number in front and multiplying.  You can also set how many numbers you want the calculator to create by adding a comma and the number you want. This would definitely come in handy for assignments in class that require randomly selecting from a list of options.  The main difference between desmos and the TI-84 is speed and the layout of information.  It can get tedious clicking from page to page on the calculator, but on desmos everything is on one screen and it runs way faster than the TI-84.  Both the TI-84 and desmos could help communicate ideas in statistics classes such as regressions, plotting and graphing data, and analyzing trends.  These types of lessons would be geared for 7^th grade if we are talking about data analysis and high school statistics classes if we use the technology for finding normalPDF.