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by ndiddy 48 days ago
Yeah there's not really a purpose for advanced calculators anymore (apart from the niche market of people who just enjoy using them). Calculators are basically only a thing now to make it harder to cheat on exams. If you don't have that constraint, you might as well use Wolfram or Matlab or whatever.
1 comments
vkou 48 days ago
Or, here's a wild idea - exam problems should be structured such that they do not require any advanced calculator.

Math problems should not require any calculator. Physics problems should require a scientific calculator. Overcomplicating the arithmetic shouldn't be the point.

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nickelpro 47 days ago
That rules out classes of problem which we want to teach, or falls back to using lookup tables which is more arduous and limits the number of problems which can be put on an exam.

Teaching students to use lookup tables at all is a largely pointless exercise. Teaching students to graph or use statistical functions on an advanced calculator transfers very well to other environments.

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vkou 47 days ago
> That rules out classes of problem which we want to teach

Does it? Could you give a contrived example of a high school problem that would be ruled out by a lack of a graphing calculator?

> Teaching students to graph

They should be able to plot any of the functions they'll be working with by hand, very quickly.

> statistical functions

If they are using statistics, they should be able to provide the relevant combinatorial coefficients as the answer (xCy, etc), without actually doing the computation.

Not to mention that scientific calculators all support basic stats functions.

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nickelpro 47 days ago
You've already rejected elsewhere in the comments the style of problem these calculators are used for as either "more complicated than a high schooler is taught" or a "your teachers have wasted your time".

Which is fine, you have an idiosyncratic view of modern mathematical pedagogy (at least as it exists in the US). When you're a high school math teacher you can argue with your state dept. of ed. about it.

These calculators are also used at the undergrad level, fwiw, so the "high school level" (whatever limit you're putting on that, many high schools will accelerate students into undergrad stats and as far as Calc II), is not a factor in their use overall.

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saagarjha 47 days ago
Calculators can do a lot of things; a lot of physics is greatly improved by access to a good calculator.
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