Some students and engineers own a graphing calculator and never use
the graphics abilities. They need the statistical analysis functions,
or the matrix manipulation features, or they need something that will
knock out calculations and formulas in scientific precision. The
good news is that these are all a part of SpaceTime too. It’s
a lot more than just a powerful graphing tool, but it is that as well.
The inspiration for SpaceTime is actually the TI-83 graphing calculator.
The original goal the programmers had in creating SpaceTime was to eliminate
the need for people who already had a Pocket PC to also have to purchase
some sort of graphing calculator. To that end, SpaceTime has all
the features you’d expect from a top-of-the-line graphing calculator
with some added ease of use that comes from working with a full-color
touch-screen based device.
SpaceTime is a full-featured calculation tool.
WHAT’S
HOT
It can do one and two variable statistics functions from data "lists"
you enter. These lists can be simple numbers or even calculations.
It can do matrix manipulation with two-dimensional matrices of up to
100 elements square. You can create your own named variables and
use these in calculations or even create and store your own formulas
using these named variables. SpaceTime also includes a number
of common formulas (like the infamous quadratic equation), allowing
you to fill in the variables to get the results of the equations.
It’s also a powerful graphing tool. For statisticians, it has
scatter graphs, histograms, box graphs, and normal distribution graphs.
It can also show your data versus linear, logarithmic, exponential,
power, quadratic, cubic, quartic, and logistic regression curves as
well as show the data in relation to a median-median line. You
can do 2D rectangular or polar function or parametric (discrete data
point) graphs, or 3D rectangular, spherical, or cylindrical functions
or parametric graphs. In either the 2D or 3D graphs, you can add
the variable T to represent time, set the start, end, and step values
for time, and observe your graph transforming over time.
Two Stunads & Co. sell the program with the words "nearly all
the mathematical capabilities of a TI-83 calculator," but in many
ways SpaceTime exceeds it’s inspiration. Some calculator programs
essentially emulate their inspiration, right down to the key design
and display size. What Two Stunads & Co. did is something
much better. They took the feature set and concept as a guide,
then wrote a program that does that, but takes advantage of the Pocket
PC. The TI-83 has a cramped, tiny, monochrome display and it still
takes up twice the pocket-space of my HP 2215. Because the "keyboard"
on SpaceTime goes away when you don’t need it, you see a lot more screen.
Because the Pocket PC supports full color, your graphs are vivid and
easy to read.
Setup is straight forward and simple. You
SETUP
can install SpaceTime in main memory or onto a storage card as you wish.
The setup program also puts a short-cut pointing to the program into
the Programs folder of your Start Menu. The first time you run
the program, it automatically starts the tutorials. That’s a good
idea as the program does a lot and the tutorials explain it quite well.
PROGRAM
FEATURES
When you first start SpaceTime, you’re immediately taken to the built-in
Tutorials. The tutorials take you through the basic operation,
through graphing operations, and through using the statistics functions.
They’re not complete, nor very detailed, but they do give you a good
idea of how the program works and, once you’ve been through the tutorials,
you should be able to figure out the rest of the programs features fairly
easily.
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SpaceTime is, after all, a calculator. Shown above is the basic
calculator view, the precision, mode, and notation settings (to the
right top), and the 2nd and 3rd key functions (to the right bottom).
Clicking on the small box in the upper left corner drops down a menu
(shown below) which allows you access to the calculators more sophisticated
functionality.
We’ve seen the Calculator mode and the Tutorial views above. We’ll
step through the other options now:
The graphing view shows the screen you see above. As you can see
from the drop-down list, you can graph 2D [rectangular] functions, 2D
Parametrics (discrete data points), 2D Polar functions, 3D [rectangular]
functions, 3D Parametrics, 3D Spherical functions, and 3D Cylindrical
functions. The left-most colored box indicates the color of the
graph. The second box in 2D graphs lets you select the whether
the lines of the graph are solid or dotted and whether the top, bottom,
or center toward the origin of the graph will be shaded. The second
box in the 3D graph allows you to specify an additional color which
is used in color gradation. The right-most colored box is a drop-down
menu that lets you select random, normal, diagonal, four color, or no
gradient. There are five buttons, just below the mode settings,
which allow you to enter specific parameters and to view your data in
several ways.
The 
button
lets you set the minimums and maximums of your display area, in either
rectangular or trigonometric/polar coordinates, and to zoom in, or zoom
out from your initial settings.
The 
button lets
you set the starting and ending times, the amount that time will step
with each iteration, whether the whole sequence will loop, whether it
will reverse and play backward during a loop or simply skip to the beginning
again. If you set the unbounded option, time simply step forward
until you stop the display process.
You probably noticed the "T" in the above graphs. When
you insert time into an equation. SpaceTime uses the time values above
and lets you watch as your graph changes according to time. This
feature is not only useful in some engineering and statistics applications,
it also has a coolness factor that asymptotically approaches infinity.
The 
button lets
you see the actual values your function generates, but only for the
2D plots.
The 
button
lets you adjust all the display aspects of your graph.
Once you’ve tweaked all the settings to exactly what you want, the Plot
button at the bottom of the screen displays your graph. Below
left, you’ll see the 2D plot. At the top of the 2D plot display
are buttons that let you center the graph on the axis, determine a y
value for any x you select with your stylus, use your stylus to zoom
in and out, and use your stylus to move the window on your graph right,
left, up, and/or down. Next to that are options to highlight axis
crossing points, minima, and maxima. The [X] is, as you might
guess, a button to close the plot view. In the 3D plot shown below
right, you’ll see the buttons to allow you to center on the axis, move
the window right, left, up, or down, or to rotate the plot to a different
vantage point.
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The statistics view gives you access to statistical plotting and tests
on data sets.
The 
button gives
you access to scatter graphs, histograms, box plots, and normal probability
curve plots.
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The 
button allows
you to see your data set compared to the various regressions that you
see displayed on the right. The program will calculate the appropriate
values to give whichever regression you choose the best fit possible
to your data. You can then see the comparison graph displayed
to visually check how close the match is.
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The 
button allows
you to test your data set with the statistical tests shown on the right
below.
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The 
button
gives you 1- and 2- variable statistics values based on the data set
you specify. Below you can see the results of the 1-variable stat
calculations on a test set I entered.
The button
allows you to set the scope of your window on your statistical graphs.
It works the same as the Window button in the 2D and 3D graphing view.
The lists view lets you enter simple data sets.
These data sets can consist of simple numbers as well as equations.
These sets can have as few as 1 column and as many as 100 columns.
List sets are used in statistical functions, parametric graphs, and
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The matrix view lets you enter a two dimensional
matrix for manipulation using standard math functions or the the matrix-specific
functions, determinate and transposition, which you get by pressing
the Matrix button on the calculator keypad. Each matrix is given
a variable name by which you can refer to it in calculations.
There’s also a editor screen that allows you to enter values into your
matrix and modify values within an already-entered matrix. Matrices
can be a maximum of 100 by 100 values.
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The formula view allows you to work with some pre-defined
formulas. These include the quadratic equation and various formulas
for determining values for specific geometric objects. You can
also create your own formulas in the calculator view. There doesn’t
appear to be a way to store a user-created formula for later use other
than storing the whole calculator state using the File button.
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The about button simply tells you about the program
and the programmers. Unfortunately, it does not tell you what
"stunads" means 
The exit button shuts down the program.
One of the great features of SpaceTime is
HELP
SUPPORT
the built in tutorials. The tutorials are a great help in figuring
out the more complex features, but as it’s been a while since I’ve played
with a scientific calculator, I could have used a little more information
on the basic operations. As an example, I never did figure out
what the {{, },{, and }} keys did. The tutorials provide the only
help for the program. What I would have liked is a feature-by-feature
list including what each function does and the other functions you’d
likely use along with it.
One of the great aspects of SpaceTime is
OPTIONS
the level of user control. As with the TI calculator on which
it’s based, you can choose the range and scale of your plots.
You can also highlight certain features like minima, maxima, and/or
axis crossings. Unlike the TI calculator, you can choose the color
of most elements of your plots and you can zoom, scale, and even change
the orientation on your graph dynamically, using your stylus as a control.
Being able to control the colors is more than aesthetics. It can
help you see aspects of your data that wouldn’t be so obvious in monochrome.
Being able to orient your graph dynamically is a lot of fun to watch,
but it also can reveal some aspects of data that aren’t immediately
obvious. For instance, data points may appear to be totally random
at the typical orientation, but, with a little change, are clearly on
a single plane.
SpaceTime will run on any Windows CE 3.0
SYSTEM
REQUIREMENTS
or above device with an SH3, MIPS, or ARM/XScale processor. That
includes Windows Mobile 2003 devices. This review was written
using the program on my 2215 iPAQ. It requires 700KB of storage
and 6MB of program memory to run.
The program does exactly what it says it
BUGS
AND WISHES
will. I didn’t experience any glitches or bugs. I did have
a few items on my "wish list," however. First, as a
died-in-the-wool RPN fan, I really wish the calculator had an RPN as
well as Algebraic mode. Second, I would have liked to see some
calculus functions. Finally, I find the User Interface workable,
but I’d like something a little less dark. It would be great if
the interface supported "skins" so you could change the button
style and color schemes. Interestingly enough, all of these are
already on the programmers’ list for future versions. It’s nice
to see that the programmers are already looking ahead to improving their
product. Here are some other things I think they could work on:
- I
mentioned the file menu above that allow you to save whatever is in
the calculator at that time, including calculations in the display,
user-defined variables and functions, lists and matrices. That’s
a good feature, but I would have liked to be to "import"
lists and matrices as well. A direct import from a Pocket Excel
spreadsheet would be fabulous, but I’d settle for being able to read
comma separated, or other parsed data from a text file. It’d
also be nice to be able to export lists and tables to Pocket Excel. - I
had no problem at all with the 100 list constraint on data sets.
I think it’s more than enough. The 100×100 elements limitation
for matrices, however, is probably reasonable for student use, but
it may fall short out in the real world. - As
I said, the Exit option in the menu shuts down the program.
By that I mean it truly shuts it down and doesn’t simply send it to
background. There isn’t a way to send the program to run in
background. In fact, since the button that calls up iTask on
my iPAQ is mapped to pull down the main menu, I can’t even switch
tasks that way. That makes it all the more important to be able
to save the current calculator state so you can get back to it later.
I do wish there were a way to minimize SpaceTime so I could switch
to another program and back more quickly. - As I
mentioned earlier, it’s been a while since I’ve used a scientific
calculator (and even longer since I’ve worked with an Algebraic model).
I could have used a little more tutorial in the basic operation.
If you’re already using a scientific calculator, especially if you’re
using one of the TI models, you’ll have no trouble at all. If
it’s been a while for you too, make sure you set aside some time to
"play" with the various menus and operations. - I found
the user interface quite easy to navigate and, for the most part,
functions and features were where I expected to find them. The
one exception was that I had to remind myself a few times that to
create a list, matrix, variable, or formula, I had to use
the menu at the top left. To use any of these, I could
stay in the calculator mode. I can’t think of any way that would
be more intuitive. I just note the difficulty here. - Another
aspect of the user interface is the use of the 2nd and 3rd function
keys. That’s just like on the TI calculator upon which SpaceTime
is based. The difference is that, on the calculators, you can
see the 2nd and 3rd functions before you press the key. In Space/Time,
the key labels change when you press the 2nd and 3rd function keys.
That helps keep the on-screen keyboard from obscuring too much of
the display area, but it also means you sometimes have to "tap
around" a bit to find the function you wanted. If there
were some way of putting miniature 2nd and 3rd function labels on
the keys, that would help as long as it didn’t add too much to the
size of the onscreen keyboard.
SpaceTime sells for $29.95 and is available
PURCHASING
from
the store on the twostunads.com web site. You can buy a full
version or download a demo version.
PROS
Full algebraic calculator feature set- Statistics
and matrix manipulation functions - Named
variables and function support - 2D,
3D, and even 4D graphing capabilities
User-controlled options for scaling, colors, and other aspects of
graph display- The
ability to slide and/or rotate a graph while it’s displayed
CONS
- No
RPN - No
calculus functions - Somewhat
dark user interface - Can’t
import or export data sets, matrices, or user-defined formulas
Limitations on the size of matrices- Exit
really exits — no way to just "minimize" the program - No
2nd and 3rd function labels until you press those keys
I’m quite impressed with the capabilities of SpaceTime
OVERALL
IMPRESSION
as it is. I’m also looking forward to seeing the future versions
when the programmers add RPN, calculus functions, and a skinnable interface.
It’s both powerful and easy to use and I recommend it to anyone in the
statistics, mathematics, and engineering fields. If you’re looking
for a full-function math/engineering calculator, there’s no need to
look any further. If you were even thinking of buying a graphing
calculator, don’t. Buy SpaceTime instead.
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