About
I am Bill Paetzke (pronounced PET-skee). I am the creator of this website and the TI-83, TI-83 Plus, and TI-84 Plus math programs here. My objective is to help students, teachers, and other TI-83/TI-84 Plus users be more efficient at solving their math problems, so they have more free-time to spend.
I’ve always been good at math. In second grade, I beat all twenty-some of my classmates in a game called around-the-world for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The objective of the game was to win duels against the most number of classmates in reciting flashcard answers the fastest; the teacher administers the flashcards. Quick, what is 5 + 4? 9. So, when someone dueled me, I won, and then I kept going and never lost. The teacher gave me a ribbon after four days gameplay going undefeated.
I am very efficient, and I enjoy my free-time. In my freshman year of high school, I got a TI-83 Plus calculator for my geometry class. I found some assignments tedious because they either had a few problems that required a lot of steps or they had a lot of problems that required a few steps. In both cases, the problems within an assignment required similar steps. So, I wrote programs to expedite the steps and give me more free-time. Granted, I’d still have to show my work, but I didn’t have to check it.
I never made games for the TI-83. I didn’t want to waste my time helping other people waste their time. But I do understand that there is a healthy demand for games, so I linked to some of the best games in some of my posts.
By the start of my senior year in fall 2001, I had developed several programs for Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry. I built a website and put my TI-83/TI-84 Plus programs online for others to use. Later that fall, I added programs for Physics and Statistics. It was a huge success. Within a year, the website saw upwards of 50,000 hits per month.
I went to college at the University of Southern California (USC), and the website remained largely stagnant for the next four years. I graduated and got a job as a software developer. I caught on to the concept of search engine optimization, and I thought I’d update this website once again–to be search engine optimized. I hope this updated website reaches more students, teachers, and other TI-83/TI-84 users.