For almost all students, what happens when they push buttons on their calculators is essentially magic, and the techniques used are seemingly pure wizardry. In this article, the author draws back the curtain to expose some of the mathematics behind computational wizardry and introduces some fundamental ideas that are accessible to precalculus…

Compares the trends of women's and men's world records for the 800-meter run using the linear and power regression capabilities of a graphing calculator. (MDH)

Presents results of an investigation of a formula for rank correlation. The exploration turned up an unexpected connection and showed the formula to be far from arbitrary. (PK)

Following a brief historical review of the mechanism of mathematical modeling, examples are included that associate a mathematical model with given data (changes in sea level) and that model a real-life situation (process of parallel parking). Also provided is the rationale for the curricular implementation of mathematical modeling. (JJK)