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.

I hated graphing equations in school. I did a math A (advanced)-level, which is the equivalent of, I don’t know, a Nobel prize or something in the U.S. One of our tasks was to look at equations and do a quick eyeball sketch. No plotting, just guesstimates. I was hopeless, failing on anything more complex than x=y+1. Worse, I had a primitive graphing calc in my bag that I wasn’t allowed to use.

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.

Now the beautiful math plots and photographs of math artist Nikki Graziano are within reach of any high school calculus student — at least in principle.

With tech like this, I’m surprised anyone actually goes to school anymore. After all, you don’t actually need to do any work there, it’s all done for you. If you have any doubt as to the disappearing math abilities of the developed world, think about this: why are there so many tip-calculators in the App Store? Can you really not work out 15-percent in your head?

$130, available now.

Casio Unveils Next-Generation Graphing Calculator – PrizmTM [Casio]