Scientific or graphing calculator? What tools should students buy? As your kids grow older and get older, the list of school supplies could become shorter, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily more expensive. One item that can cause sticker shock to parents of high and middle school students is a specially designed calculator. Many schools prefer if students are equipped with a handheld scientific calculator. In higher mathematics classes, such as AP Calculus , a graphing calculator may be required. But, what's the distinction? A scientific calculator can perform tasks in addition, subtraction division and multiplication. The most common scientific calculators have buttons that are specifically for parentheses, trigonometric calculations, exponents inverted numbers and pi in addition to many other things. A graphing calculator does even more. It has a bigger screen that allows you to input a function and then view a graph of it. Best to Buy's Geek S...