What’s Different between TI-83 and TI-84?

Summary:  The TI-83 and TI-84 are nearly keystroke compatible, but the 84 has a few new functions that the 83 lacks. This page lists them.

See also:  TI’s own Comparison chart shows all graphing models, not just the 83 and 84. But it’s fairly high level and doesn’t mention specific functions.

See also:  The TI-84 Plus and TI-84 Plus Silver Edition Guidebook is hard to find at the TI site, but is mirrored here (3.8 MB PDF). It’s also on the CD that came with your TI-84.

Differences between TI-84 Plus and TI-84 Plus Silver Edition

This page compares the two models I have, the TI-83 Plus Silver Edition and the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition. I know of only these differences between the plain TI-84 Plus and the Silver Edition:

• The Simultaneous Equation Solver, Polynomial Root Finder, and Pie Chart applications aren’t preloaded on the plain TI-84 Plus.
• The Silver Edition has 1.5 MB of flash ROM compared to the Plus’s 480 KB.
• The Silver Edition has swappable faceplates. (Whoop-de-do.)

If you have a plain TI-84 Plus, I’d be grateful for a report of any of the functions listed below that your calculator doesn’t have.

Differences between TI-83 Silver and TI-84 Silver

Keyboard and Menus

The keyboards are identical in labeling, but the 84’s design is curved, and all keys except the numeric keypad are smaller.

The 84 has a clock, which you can view or set by pressing [MODE].

There are four new goodies for statistics students:

• On the [STAT] CALC menu, there’s a new item D:Manual-Fit.

• On the [STAT] TESTS menu, there are two new entries: D:χ²GOF-Test and G:LinRegTInt. The 83 screen is shown at left and the 84 screen at right:

     

• On the [2nd VARS makes DISTR] menu, there’s a new entry, 4:InvT; see Critical t on the TI-83/84/89. The 83’s selections 4–E become 5–F on the 84. TC3's MATH200 students care only about binompdf, which is [2nd VARS makes DISTR] [0] on the 83 and [2nd VARS makes DISTR] [ALPHA MATH makes A] on the 84, and binomcdf, which is [2nd VARS makes DISTR] [ALPHA MATH makes A] on the 83, [2nd VARS makes DISTR] [ALPHA APPS makes B] on the 84.

(Of these new statistical features, only χ²GOF-Test is relevant to TC3’s MATH200 class, and this Web site contains a TI-83 program that does more.)

Catalog Functions

The following catalog functions are in the 84 but not the 83:

• χ²GOF-Test
• checkTmr
• ClockOff and ClockOn
• dayOfWk
• ExecLib
• getDate, getDtFmt, getDtStr, getTime, getTmFmt, getTmStr
• invT
• isClockOn
• LinRegTInt
• Manual-Fit
• OpenLib
• setDate, setDtFmt, setTime, setTmFmt
• startTmr
• timeCnv

The included Catalog Help application doesn’t describe these. Consult Appendix A of the Guidebook for the use of these catalog entries — except for ExecLib and OpenLib, which seem to be undocumented.