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To be honest, I really don’t get why the SAT board allows using calculators anyway. They can certainly make the numbers in the math questions easier to calculat

To be honest, I really don’t get why the SAT board allows using calculators anyway. They can certainly make the numbers in the math questions easier to calculate (make it divisible without any weird fractions/decimals). And to be honest if you are somewhere in the pre-calculus/calculus level you should have an intuition of how to roughly draw graphs by hand (without a graphing calculator). It really seems like corruption of the College Board (and many other western educational institutions) at this point...

dagw 5y ago
I really don’t get why the SAT board allows using calculators anyway Especially since (at least in my experience) basically none of the math courses at University level involve a calculator.
- oses 5y ago
  this greatly depends on the university. The first university I went to allowed calculators and required TI nspire for calc 2. When I transferred the second university did not allow graphing calculators and covered half the content in the same period of time. (calc 2 content was covered in calc 1 at first university)
  - dagw 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, which parts or topics of the 'calc 2' curriculum involved calculators? Where you using it for numerical analysis or for symbolic algebra.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Especially since (at least in my experience) basically none of the math courses at University level involve a calculator. A lot of non-math courses (e.g., in the sciences) at University level involve numeric computations that want some type of calculation device to avoid needless pain, and the math that is tested on the SAT feeds into those courses as well as math courses.
  - lasagnaphil 5y ago
    Yeah, but I really don't get that you need to be "educated" to use a calculator - it's just something that's just too banally simple. It's definitely not a skill that needs to be explicitly prepared for high schoolers getting into college. And to be honest, you don't really need one of those fancy expensive TI graphing calculators to do all those physics/chemistry problem sets. You just need a good-enough scientific calculator (for example, a cheap Sharp one you can get for $20 bucks) and there would be almost no difference in the time it takes to finish your homework.
rtkwe 5y ago
Trig functions are basically impossible to do that with unless you limit the angles drastically then you're still testing memorization instead of actual math skills.
- khafra 5y ago
  There is a common issue with limiting the angles in trig, and only requiring division with an integer or simple fraction solution: It provides a lot of help to the test-taker, based on their test-taking skills rather than their math skills. If the test-taker can discard mistaken answers because they don't look like the kind of answer the test designer would choose, the test diverges from testing for the desired skills.
  - rtkwe 5y ago
    Yeah I remember doing that too. Sometimes you could eliminate all the other answers because they weren't in the right area or the wrong sign. It was also interesting to see how answers would often have one that would be your result if you missed a step or had some other smallish error in your work.
- chongli 5y ago
  You can teach the students trig identities to expand the choice of angles. Moreover, the purpose of the lesson should be to teach the method of solving the problem. Pushing the buttons on the calculator to get a final answer in decimal form (only an approximation) is extraneous to that goal.
  - mbreese 5y ago
    Or they could go really old-school and provide a look up table... sin(x) = y for a variety of values of x. Or, even nicer -- instead of having a correct numerical answer, they could write the answers as formulas. Then you wouldn't need to know the actual values at all. (Then again, this could also be a pain). But some combination of the two should be possible without needing manual computation.
  - 5y ago
simondotau 5y ago
While we're at it, maybe we should have students write their answers with ink and quill onto rag paper. The College Board is clearly in the pocket of Big Ballpoint. If anything, a calculator is under-equipping students in an exam. Anyone using these skills professionally is going to be doing so with tools far more sophisticated than a graphing calculator. We need to be testing their ability to understand and apply principles, not pit hand-calculation skills (which they'll never use in real life) against a stopwatch.

dagw 5y ago

I really don’t get why the SAT board allows using calculators anyway Especially since (at least in my experience) basically none of the math courses at University level involve a calculator.

oses 5y ago
this greatly depends on the university. The first university I went to allowed calculators and required TI nspire for calc 2. When I transferred the second university did not allow graphing calculators and covered half the content in the same period of time. (calc 2 content was covered in calc 1 at first university)
- dagw 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, which parts or topics of the 'calc 2' curriculum involved calculators? Where you using it for numerical analysis or for symbolic algebra.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Especially since (at least in my experience) basically none of the math courses at University level involve a calculator. A lot of non-math courses (e.g., in the sciences) at University level involve numeric computations that want some type of calculation device to avoid needless pain, and the math that is tested on the SAT feeds into those courses as well as math courses.
- lasagnaphil 5y ago
  Yeah, but I really don't get that you need to be "educated" to use a calculator - it's just something that's just too banally simple. It's definitely not a skill that needs to be explicitly prepared for high schoolers getting into college. And to be honest, you don't really need one of those fancy expensive TI graphing calculators to do all those physics/chemistry problem sets. You just need a good-enough scientific calculator (for example, a cheap Sharp one you can get for $20 bucks) and there would be almost no difference in the time it takes to finish your homework.

rtkwe 5y ago

Trig functions are basically impossible to do that with unless you limit the angles drastically then you're still testing memorization instead of actual math skills.

khafra 5y ago
There is a common issue with limiting the angles in trig, and only requiring division with an integer or simple fraction solution: It provides a lot of help to the test-taker, based on their test-taking skills rather than their math skills. If the test-taker can discard mistaken answers because they don't look like the kind of answer the test designer would choose, the test diverges from testing for the desired skills.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  Yeah I remember doing that too. Sometimes you could eliminate all the other answers because they weren't in the right area or the wrong sign. It was also interesting to see how answers would often have one that would be your result if you missed a step or had some other smallish error in your work.
chongli 5y ago
You can teach the students trig identities to expand the choice of angles. Moreover, the purpose of the lesson should be to teach the method of solving the problem. Pushing the buttons on the calculator to get a final answer in decimal form (only an approximation) is extraneous to that goal.
- mbreese 5y ago
  Or they could go really old-school and provide a look up table... sin(x) = y for a variety of values of x. Or, even nicer -- instead of having a correct numerical answer, they could write the answers as formulas. Then you wouldn't need to know the actual values at all. (Then again, this could also be a pain). But some combination of the two should be possible without needing manual computation.
- 5y ago

simondotau 5y ago

While we're at it, maybe we should have students write their answers with ink and quill onto rag paper. The College Board is clearly in the pocket of Big Ballpoint. If anything, a calculator is under-equipping students in an exam. Anyone using these skills professionally is going to be doing so with tools far more sophisticated than a graphing calculator. We need to be testing their ability to understand and apply principles, not pit hand-calculation skills (which they'll never use in real life) against a stopwatch.