November 2007. Welcome to the eighth and final edition of fxNews. After 2 years, 8 editions, 18 tutorials, 113 programs, 30 spreadsheets, 21 eActivities, 35 Tips and Tricks and 18 KeyLogs we reckon there's not much more we can do for you guys out there in schools and colleges. (Let us know if we're wrong!) In 2008 we're planning to figure out ways of helping educators embrace CAS technologies as their role in education starts to develop.

Please note that the fx-9860G, fx-9860G AU and fx-9860G SD models are all fully compatible with each other and fxNews software. The only differences are in the amount of storage memory available in each.

How to load fxNews from CD onto your fx-9860G
Loading the software into the fx-9860G requires three basic steps

• copying the software from the files folder on the CD to the default My Documents/CASIO/FA-124 folder on your computer;
• loading the software into the FA-124; and
• transferring the software to the fx-9860G.

Using the FA-124 Software – Basics
The FA-124 software is supplied on the CD that came with your fx-9860G. It must be installed on your computer BEFORE you first use the supplied USB cable to connect up an fx-9860G. This tutorial runs through the basics of installation and file transfer.

Time Value Money Examples
The Time, Value and Money application gets an airing in this edition. This four page set of examples demonstrates most of the common uses made of TVM in solving financial problems.

How to write a program for the fx-9860G - Part 4
This edition carries the last of our four-part feature to develop your programming skills. Besides reviewing your skills to date, you will learn about If... Then... Else... End structures. These are used to make decisions and control branching in programs.

This edition of fxNews contains six programs - one update of FINDRULE and five new programs

The collection includes these new programs

• BASECONV - This program is a utility to convert a number from one number base to another.
• BEARINGS - This program is for solving two types of bearing problems. The first problem type is adding together stages of a journey and then finding the distance and bearing to return to the start. The second problem type is X travels from the start to point A and Y does the same to point B. The distance of A from B is then required together with the bearing.
• TRAPPEDA - This program calculates the area trapped between any two curves entered in Y1 and Y2 in Graph mode.

As mentioned earlier, this edition also contains the last of a four-part tutorial on writing your own programs.

More can be found on the programs page.

Two new spreadsheets have been included in this edition of fxNews.

• PTSEARCH - serves as both a great introduction to creating a simple spreadsheet and secondly for investigating Pythagorean triples.
• PI - shows how a spreadsheet can be used to estimate a value for pi to a given number of decimal places using a series.

More can be found on the spreadsheets page.

What is an eActivity? To quote the Casio world site, 'The innovative eActivity functions of the fx-9860G series allow the students, not to mention teachers, to create their own problems or study materials.'

This edition of fxNews contains two new eActivities.

• INFLECTN illustrates how points of inflection may be found using derivatives of f(x).
• CASCADE shows how calculations in an eActivity update in a cascading style – which can be a useful tool when solving problems.

More can be found on the eActivities page.

• Auto Zoom
• Working with results
• Error Messages - a brief summary of how the most common of these arise.

More can be found on the Tips and Tricks page.

New for 2007, KeyLogs are ready for immediate use with the new fx9860G Manager PLUS software introduced by Casio last year. Load a KeyLog into the Manager PLUS software and then sit back and watch the key presses required to carry out various operations. Save them onto your intranet and your students can then learn basic calculator operations from anywhere!

Last edition we looked at Univariate Statistics. This time we have another four KeyLogs for the Recursion application. more...

The last for this year, we have another problem suited to writing a short program to find a solution. In this edition we also have a solution to the problem posed in August and example programs to solve both this and the previous (August) problem. more...

Nearly two years after the Australian release of the fx-9860G and the internet is starting to be home to a few sites worth visiting. The review section of fxNews will present to you an up to date catalogue of the best more...

As mentioned above, this is the last edition of fxNews for the time being. We hope that you have found all eight editions valuable in developing your skills with the Casio fx-9860G.

Thank you for your support and all the best for 2008.

Making things easy! The entire edition of fxNews is contained in a single document called fxNews2007Volume4.pdf. Simply open the document and you can print the entire edition. Easy!

© The Tuition Centre 2007. All fxNews publications and software for use by members of subscribing institute only.