Re: 92/89s on tests

[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Re: 92/89s on tests

At 10:21 PM 6/6/98 PDT, you wrote:
>     Some one brought up a good point the other day about the 92s not
>being allowed on tests.  I got a 92 the year it came out.  I was
>still in college then taking Calc 3 I believe, and it was a pretty
>big deal in the math department.
>     It scared some of my teachers.  They simply didn't know how to
>deal with it.  Some of them wanted it banned (using the excuse that
>it had a qwerty keyboard), while others felt like it was no big
>deal.  The head of the math department decided that it would be up to
>the individual teachers to decide, but she felt she would have to
>eventually change the way that all the teachers taught.
>     I don't know if anyone out there had a similiar experience (as
>teacher or student), but I would be interested in hearing about it.
>     I don't think the 89 is going to make things on this front any
>better.  Any teachers or departments hailing the qwerty excuse will
>lose that and will be forced to deal with advancing technology.
>     Personally I feel that they shouldn't be allowed on any test
>from calc 2 and below.  Teachers don't allow basic calcs on
>arithmatic tests, so should they allow essentially the same thing at
>higher levels?
>
>interested in hearing your ideas on this,

Agreed in every aspect except for one thing...speed.  Take one entire day
in class without your calculator.  Can you make it completely through w/o
embarassment?  If you can, then you should be allowed to use it because you
aren't calculator dependent.  If you can't then you need practice because
you won't always have access to that big block every day on the job.  That
is what I believe should be done...none of this wishy, washy stuff about
qwerty keypads.  The question should be, are you a vegetable or are you
capable of treating technology with respect.

However, if it deals with tables, it's generally a good idea to use the
calculator.  Why?  You try to figure out the sin^-1 .67583023 to the
10,000ths place by hand or by memory (not using any books of tables
either).  There is no way to do it.  Books of tables are slow and tedious
(and waste trees), so use a calculator for necessary stuff like that.
Otherwise, you should be able to calculate everything else by hand.

As a side note, I keep finding that I turn to my calculator whenever I am
asked to do a math problem.  It's usually long division and fractions that
gets me.  I really just need to sit down with a (LARGE) table of fractions
and decimal values for a day and I'll have the whole matter cleaned up.
I'm not a vegetable, it's just that I need to brush up on a few things here
or there.  Even my math teacher has problems teaching sometimes because she
can't remember how to do something...but of course she grabs the nearest
book and thumbs her way to the information she needs and then punches it in
her calculator :)


                 Thomas J. Hruska -- thruska@tir.com
Shining Light Productions -- "Meeting the needs of fellow programmers"
         http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/8504
                    http://shinelight.home.ml.org
Follow-Ups: References: