Basics of Graphing For TI-83 Plus Users

When graphing equations on a TI-83 Plus there are three screens that are very useful to know: The Y= screen The Graph screen The Calc screen All of the screens can be accessed by pressing one of three buttons on the TI-83 Plus

The Y = Screen To access the Y = screen, hit the Y = button on the upper right hand portion of your TI-83 Plus calculator

The Y = Screen From the blank Y = screen add an equation you would like to graph such as y=x 2 From there you can add additional equations that you would like to graph such as y=2x+5

The Graph Screen You can access the Graph screen by hitting the button on the upper right-hand corner of your TI-83 Plus calculator

The Graph Screen This is what a blank graph screen looks like: When y=x 2 is selected from the y = screen it produces this: When 2x+5 is graphed with y=x 2 the Graph screen looks like this:

The Calc Menu To access the Calc menu hit the 2 nd button Then hit the TRACE button to the left of the GRAPH button

The Calc Menu The Calc Menu will then appear. To use one of its functions hit either the corresponding number or scroll down to the item you want and hit enter. This will then take you back to the graph and prompt you on how to find the particular command. Why don’t we try intersect!!!

The calculator will prompt you to find the first curve and give you a flashing cursor (pictured at right as a box) to indicate which curve, in this case y=x 2. Select it by hitting enter. The calculator will then prompt you to select the second curve (notice the cursor has already moved to the line y=2x+5) if this curve is correct, simply hit enter. The calculator will then ask for a “guess”, simply hit enter at this screen to output the result.

The calculator will output the point at which these two functions intersect. It lists both the x and the y!!! Many of the calc menu functions work similarly as the calculator prompts you and tells you what you need to do to get the desired output and from there you can graph and find out info from graphs quicker than you can say, “I love my TI-83 Plus Calculator!”

The End!!!