Commercial websites are designed to sell products, which is why they are generally not considered a credible source of information for the purposes of research.

Science is generally done at educational institutions as well as through recognized scientific organizations and publications.

So yes, there are some commercial sites which might be considered credible, because they are run by credible publishers like Nature Publishing Group, which runs the peer-reviewed journal www.nature.com and the popular science magazine www.scientificamerican.com.

But some commercial website, hawking a diet, is not a credible source.

It is impossible to prove that a substance does not cause cancer. Your argument is invalid because there is no food in existence which we can show absolutely does not increase cancer risk. What we can say, for example, is that extensive testing has been done on substances like aspartame with no clear evidence of any increased cancer risk in humans. We cannot say, by contrast, that extensive testing has been done on organic apples or most other "natural" foods, since only artificial substances require testing to be approved for human consumption.

It is simply an illogical argument you are making because it could be made for absolutely any food or substance. If you are claiming that it increases the risk of cancer, the onus is on you to back up your beliefs by citing high quality peer reviewed research.

The scientific consensus is not that aspartame causes cancer and I defy you to actually provide valid evidence to support your claim. The scientific literature clearly shows the opposite is true. [1] Also, your claims about aspartame's insulin boosting effects is based on a small number of pilot studies, not on large scale, high quality human studies showing a real-world negative effect on human health. There is no compelling scientific evidence to demonstrate that aspartame actually causes weight-gain and I would defy you to provide it if you believe otherwise.

Finally, as I already stated, this commercial website you keep raving about is not a credible source. I am not going to waste my time reading random internet websites. You need to support your claims with credible science published in legitimate peer reviewed journals and you need to make a proper citation to the actual paper, journal, title, and date, not just say, "look at this diet website that is selling diet products". That is not a credible reference.

It is not my job to "google" scientific data to support your claims. That is a shifting the burden of proof logical fallacy. It is the job of the person making the original claim to provide credible evidence to support it, and in the case of science, that means citations to peer-reviewed publications, not writing , "Google it", or "look at this website selling diet products".

For instance, here are a couple of properly cited scientific references from the article I used as my source:

Council on Scientific Affairs. Aspartame: review of safety issues. JAMA. 1985;254:400-402.

European Food Safety Authority. Opinion on a request from the European Commission related to the 2nd ERF carcinogenicity study on aspartame. 2009. Accessed at www.efsa.europa.eu/en/scdocs/scdoc/945.htm on April 13, 2010.

Notice how the first one properly cites a publication in one of the world's most respected peer-reviewed medical journals and the second one properly cites a publication of the European Food Safety Authority. If I were to follow your example, I might just cite www.sugar.org. If you want to talk about science, you need to actually read and cite credible scientific sources, not diet websites.

SOURCES:

[1] http://www.cancer.org/cancer/c...

And you are missing my point, which is that you were making a lot of claims that fly in the face of what the scientific data actually shows and what the consensus is, and rather than supporting your arguments with high quality peer reviewed studies, you pointing me toward some website hawking a commercial product.

For instance, you made a claim that artificial sweeteners cause cancer, a claim that is directly contradicted by the scientific evidence.

Of the major sweeteners that have been extensively studied, there has been no compelling evidence found to indicate they raise cancer rates in humans. Take saccharine and aspartame. There have been a lot of high quality studies conducted on both of these chemicals and neither one has been found to cause human cancer.

And when I pointed this out, rather than actually admit that your claim was false or cite quality peer-reviewed evidence, you pointed me to the commercial diet website of some guy who was not even formally trained in biology or nutrition.

Most math classes that require calculators are not requirements for graduation. At least, that was the case when I was in school.

Usually only Algebra I and Geometry are mandatory and usually they do not require graphing calculators (it does not help much for geometry anyway).

More features than the 83, but I would expect that the 84 probably has more features now given that it has been in development for an extra decade. Anything the 84 is lacking can probably be added onto the calculator, other than, of course, a CAS.

Many modern graphing calculators have options to enter equations in "pretty print" (basically, just like you would write them out). This takes a bit longer than coding it in like a line in a program or in RPN, but there is less chance of making a mistake.

HP-50g has similar (but improved) functionality (mainly the introduction of a CAS). Unlike the new HP prime, it fully supports RPN as an option.

The calculator competes in a free market.

TI itself has figured out a business strategy to dominate the market.

It is not a monopoly. It is simply domination, similar to Wintel computers back in the 90's.

The biggest problem for competitors is that there is no longer much of a professional market for calculators and in US schools, TI has executed a brilliant business model.

Most teachers are not going to allow tablets on a test (or necessarily even in the classroom at the secondary school level) and actual TI-emulators are illegal to use unless you buy them from TI or you own the actual calculator (although obviously, like NES cartridges, the ROMS for the emulators are available from dubious sources for pirates).

That being said, there are plenty of cheap or free graphing calculators for smartphones and tablets which are legal.

Usually, the teacher does not REQUIRE a specific model, they just strongly suggest it as it is the one the teacher is going to support.

Also, usually teachers have some limited pool of calculators for use on a test.

But it is usually not as mandatory as, say, forcing children to buy school uniforms or appropriate clothing and wear them to school.

Most of the classes requiring graphing calculators are not required to graduate from high school.

And most of the problem sets at home and on tests are still doable with a scientific calculator or a slide ruler, it is just much more difficult or tedious, just like you can still type out your reports on a typewritter if you really want to.

There are a lot of school requirements that the school often does not pay for:

1. Musical instruments.

2. Appropriate clothing or school uniforms (and students certainly are not allowed to show up naked or in any attire they might happen to own).

3. Appropriate pencils, paper, backpacks, et cetera.

4. Occasionally books.

No, you just have to have it if you want support from the teacher. In high school, almost everyone had a TI-83. I had the more powerful TI-86. I simply used. . . the manual (they used to be these paper things included with products) to figure out how to accomplish the same tasks.

We also had a big box of TI-92 calculators to use in class as it was cheaper than 30 laptops running Mathematica.

HP is still in the calculator business. They just released a smartphone-like Calculator, the HP-Prime and still manufacture older calculators like the HP-50g.

These just are not used much as the standardized curriculum in US schools. Most students at college are taking their TI calculators with them because that is what they were told to buy in high schools. Some college classes use them, but most college teachers don't care. If they support calculators at all, they will tell you which one to buy and tell you you are on your own otherwise.

I used a TI-86 back in Junior High, HS, and for my first few semesters of college. It was, at the time, the best numerical calculator TI made and very user friendly compared to the more powerful competitor, the HP-48g. However, it is long deprecated. Presumably, the TI-84 can do everything the TI-86 can and more. Plus, it is currently supported by third-party developers which is a big advantage, and similar to the TI-83 calculator that has become the de facto standard of secondary education and some higher education.

If I ever went back to university and took a test where a calculator was useful, I would stick with my HP-50g. In higher learning, most professors either do not know which calculators have CAS or do not care. They either allow calculators on the test or ban them.

As for standardized tests, many do allow calculators with CAS on their tests. For instance, the SAT allows the TI-89 and HP-50g.

Obviously, I still have my old TI-86 and my HP-35 just in case I ever go back to school or have to take a standardized test with stricter standards.

You are missing the point. You did not actually link to a specific peer reviewed paper to back up a specific point you were making (preferably a metastudy). You linked to the website of some self-proclaimed nutritionist (who, it turns out, had formal training in neither medicine nor nutrition) which was hawking a product.

Also, you seem to misunderstand the point of peer review, which is to establish:

1) The research met minimum scientific standards for the journal.
2) The research produced sufficiently novel and interesting results for the standards of the journal.

It is not to determine whether the research is correct. That is what the scientific community is for. Books are not "peer reviewed" except in the rare cases where they are put out by a scientific journal or publisher with peer reviewed standards for books.

My point is, you were making a lot of claims that go against the current scientific opinion on the subject or are utterly unsupported by the evidence and instead of posting the best peer reviewed studies you could find to back them up, you posted a link to the website of some corporation trying to sell a product.

I am not sure you are understanding my point. My point was that they understand the systems and are responsible for implementing them. They are not necessarily writing the actual code themselves.

In theory, a computer scientist does not even have to have ever written a single line of real-world code and knowing how to code is worthless if you do not understand statistics, linear algebra, calculus, physics, or whatever underlying task the program is relying on.

Ultimately, it all depends on the individual and what their role in a project is. The dirty work of coding and the higher level conceptual work are too very different things.