By Tech Powered Dad | September 19, 2011
It’s been a couple of months since my original review of the Desmos graphing calculator. Desmos CEO Eli Luberoff was dropped me a line to let me know that his team has been hard at work, adding many of the features I was hopeful would show up soon after I wrote my
original review. The calculator is so chocked full of features now that it’s honestly hard to keep track of which ones showed up when, so my apologies to the Desmos team if anything I mention was available prior to these latest upgrades.
First, as I mentioned, the upgrades I was hoping for are out. Desmos now has the ability to trace, find intercepts, max/min, and the intersection of two functions. I was very impressed that with trig functions, the calculator will even attempt to give these points of interest in terms of pi, when appropriate. Also, as requested, there are now “slider bars” that give students the ability to experiment with how various parameters affect the graph. Inequalities have also been added, even polar inequalities.
Additionally, it’s very easy to share your graphs now. You can quickly take a screen shot of your graph that is exported as a PNG file. There’s even Bitly integration, so you can use the popular URL shortener to create a link to your graphs that can easily be shared via email, Twitter, Facebook, or your website.
With these latest updates, the Desmos graphing calculator is now my top choice for a free online calculator. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should head on over to Desmos.com to try it.