If you’ve ever looked at the curve of a hill, the cables of a suspension bridge or the arc of a coastline and wondered, “I wonder what function would fit that line?” — congratulations, you’re a nerd. And Casio has a surprising new calculator that will answer your question.

Casio’s new Prizm calculator is to the graphing calculators of my school-days as the iPad is to the slates we scratched on with sticks of chalk. It has a color, 216×384 pixel display, 16MB of memory, a USB-port, and will do all of your math homework for you….

Any graphing calculator will let you input an equation and show you the result. Casio’s Prizm does this in reverse. The color screen will display a picture, and will draw a line over the top of any shape you like. It will then give you an equation for this line.

If that wasn’t amazing enough, that USB port lets you hook the calc up to a compatible Casio projector to show off the results on the big screen….

$130, available now.

That’s pretty amazing. I’m not sure it’s the most important feature of this new calculator, but it does highlight the fact that our TI-83’s haven’t changed significantly in 14 years. It’s surprising, given the advances in every other area of technology. Why isn’t your TI-83 calculator three or four times smaller and 20 times more powerful than the TI-83 of 14 years ago?