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CAS capabilities are prohibited in the SAT: https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/what-to-bring-do/calculator-policy#:~:text=Calculators%20with%20CAS%20(compute

by sosborn 5mo ago

CAS capabilities are prohibited in the SAT: https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/what-to-bring-do/calculator-policy#:~:text=Calculators%20with%20CAS%20(computer%20algebra,students%20who%20take%20the%20SAT. https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/what-to-bring-do/calcu...

hatsunearu 5mo ago
Wow, they used to be allowed back when I was in high school. It came in super clutch for SAT but much more importantly AP. Our school mandated the original CS CAS and drilled us on how to use it effectively and I got good mileage out of it through high school testing and college. I lost it at some point and got the version 2 and I would occasionally use it for work. I wish it had USB-C because who has a mini-B cable for charging these days
- frostiness 5mo ago
  As someone who also menu-3-1'd their way through the SAT, I'm surprised it was ever allowed. Super useful outside of school but knowing that a good portion of my classmates using Ti-84s were doing the same problems on paper felt rather unfair.
  - hatsunearu 5mo ago
    Forgot what menu-3-1 is lol, I would use solve() all the time though. Got super good at typing that with my thumbs really fast
- peesem 5mo ago
  CollegeBoard only seemed to realize recently, the ban on CAS calculators on the SAT, PSAT, and AP exams came last September if I remember correctly, maybe August or October
- BoorishBears 5mo ago
  I vaguely remember they were banned by a proxy that stopped working after the Ti-89 came out: no QWERTY keyboards Originally that blocked the Ti-92, but then the Ti-89 and Nspire line had numeric keypads + CAS
  - z2 5mo ago
    Ah yes, I had a 89 Titanium (bought with the funds from a math prize) that felt like sanctioned cheating for College Board exams. The year I took the AP physics test, there was a surreally difficult integral or differential equation that I owed completely to the calculator. I never did as well in math competitions since getting that thing, but no regrets.
deckar01 5mo ago
They let you write python programs as long as it’s from memory though. I wonder what the code golf looks like for a rudimentary python CAS. If you could evaluate the equation without needing to parse it, I bet you could get a lot of mileage out of a black box gradient decent routine. The analog circuit solver I wrote for my nSpire (without CAS) was ~11kB. https://github.com/deckar01/pylacc https://github.com/deckar01/pylacc

by sosborn 5mo ago

hatsunearu 5mo ago

Wow, they used to be allowed back when I was in high school. It came in super clutch for SAT but much more importantly AP. Our school mandated the original CS CAS and drilled us on how to use it effectively and I got good mileage out of it through high school testing and college. I lost it at some point and got the version 2 and I would occasionally use it for work. I wish it had USB-C because who has a mini-B cable for charging these days

frostiness 5mo ago
As someone who also menu-3-1'd their way through the SAT, I'm surprised it was ever allowed. Super useful outside of school but knowing that a good portion of my classmates using Ti-84s were doing the same problems on paper felt rather unfair.
- hatsunearu 5mo ago
  Forgot what menu-3-1 is lol, I would use solve() all the time though. Got super good at typing that with my thumbs really fast
peesem 5mo ago
CollegeBoard only seemed to realize recently, the ban on CAS calculators on the SAT, PSAT, and AP exams came last September if I remember correctly, maybe August or October
BoorishBears 5mo ago
I vaguely remember they were banned by a proxy that stopped working after the Ti-89 came out: no QWERTY keyboards Originally that blocked the Ti-92, but then the Ti-89 and Nspire line had numeric keypads + CAS
- z2 5mo ago
  Ah yes, I had a 89 Titanium (bought with the funds from a math prize) that felt like sanctioned cheating for College Board exams. The year I took the AP physics test, there was a surreally difficult integral or differential equation that I owed completely to the calculator. I never did as well in math competitions since getting that thing, but no regrets.

deckar01 5mo ago

They let you write python programs as long as it’s from memory though. I wonder what the code golf looks like for a rudimentary python CAS. If you could evaluate the equation without needing to parse it, I bet you could get a lot of mileage out of a black box gradient decent routine. The analog circuit solver I wrote for my nSpire (without CAS) was ~11kB. https://github.com/deckar01/pylacc https://github.com/deckar01/pylacc