I am new to graphic calculators and am working my way through the TI-83 plus manual. I got to the Sierpinski triangle example on page 17-7. It worked as expected but I thought I would investigate what is happening with some of the calculations. Instead of a random numbers for X, Y, and N, I put in a starting value of 1 for X and Y and a constant of 0.2 for N. I also shortened the loop to only a dozen of iterations or so. With the N less than 1/3, the X and Y values should be halved for each iteration. This is true for X, but Y goes to zero after the first go around. This makes no sense to me. I tried a bunch of different changes to see why. Curiously, when I use another variable letter throughout the program rather than Y, it works just as expected showing a halved value for both X and the second variable.

While the program works as presented in the text with random numbers, I sure would like to know what is happening when one uses the variable Y so I can be confident in my results for future programming applications. There must be something I am missing. Thanks in advance for any insight. Code is below for both the original and modified program.

ORIGINAL PROGRAM

Code:


MODIFIED PROGRAM

Code:

Many of the drawing commands will reset Y (and sometimes X!) when they are used. It's rather silly. That's why it is best practice to avoid using these variables in your programs. Also welcome to Cemetech

Wow!!! Thanks for the fast and helpful reply! That is easy enough to deal with. I am glad that I at least understand what is happening.

The graphing calculators came out after I got through school but always was somewhat curious about them. I did have a Sharp EL-5500II that ran basic but just had a two line character display. I am looking forward to doing more with my TI-83 plus.

Thanks for the warm welcome!!!!

Try using the BBcode function "[ code ]" in future posts.

Example:

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Thanks. I didn't know what the BBcode function was.