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Calculators on the SAT exam - my mind blown

DrPizza

DrPizza

Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
Test that many universities and colleges use for determining admission.

Holy crap - you do NOT have to clear the memory on calculators. You can program in all the notes you want, and it's, apparently, acceptable.
 
DrPizza said:
Test that many universities and colleges use for determining admission.

Holy crap - you do NOT have to clear the memory on calculators. You can program in all the notes you want, and it's, apparently, acceptable.
Click to expand...

Loosers, whats next, it will be ok to Google the answer? :thumbsdown:
 
DrPizza said:
Test that many universities and colleges use for determining admission.

Holy crap - you do NOT have to clear the memory on calculators. You can program in all the notes you want, and it's, apparently, acceptable.
Click to expand...

How do you think I passed HS chemistry? 🙂
 
eh, i don't really see anything wrong with it.

if you think that having a ton of notes on the SAT is going to help you, chances are you aren't going to do very well on the SAT. i always thought memorizing formulas and shit for math was stupid and really unnecessary. just because you know a formula doesn't mean you know how to actually use it.

i had quite a few "open note" exams in college, so in a way the SAT's would be preparing them for the future with open notes. the problem with open note tests is that you're still time constrained, so just because you have access to all this information doesn't mean you have time to actually do anything with it.
 
Meh, when I was still in college the students are allowed to bring all the written notes they want into exams and yet they will still fail if they don't understand the subject matter. That's how tests should be designed, not about how well students can regurgitating stuff out of memory.
 
if you're digging through your calculator you're going to run out of time


purbeast0 said:
eh, i don't really see anything wrong with it.

if you think that having a ton of notes on the SAT is going to help you, chances are you aren't going to do very well on the SAT. i always thought memorizing formulas and shit for math was stupid and really unnecessary. just because you know a formula doesn't mean you know how to actually use it.

i had quite a few "open note" exams in college, so in a way the SAT's would be preparing them for the future with open notes. the problem with open note tests is that you're still time constrained, so just because you have access to all this information doesn't mean you have time to actually do anything with it.
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x is equal to negative b, plus or minus the square root, of b squared minus 4 a c, all over 2 a
 
Some memorization required for the SAT is overkill. Look at it this way - professionals at jobs still look things up. I google shit for IT stuff all the time, and I know for a fact most others do too.
 
unless you're going to put a full dictionary in there for the analogy section, i'm not sure what notes would even be useful on the SAT
 
OutHouse said:
Loosers, whats next, it will be ok to Google the answer? :thumbsdown:
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Yeah, nobody does that in real adult life, why should students think this is ok? Oh wait, that's only in the bizarro universe where humanity came into existence during the big crunch and has been steadily evolving into savage cavedwelling tribes ever since.
 
Back in my (pre-calculator) days, many of the first year engineering classes allowed students to bring a single hand-written 8.5x11 "cheat sheet" into final exams. Not surprisingly, many students worked hard to cram as much as possible (using the smallest possible writing) onto that single sheet of paper. Some of the results were real miniature masterpieces! Interestingly enough, these "cheat sheet" artists spent so much time reviewing and summarizing the course materials while creating their works of art that they seldom needed to actually refer to them. And that, of course, was the school's real reason for allowing the "cheat sheet" -- to get the students to study for the final exam.
 
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'You can program in all the notes you want' what do you mean? I did maths GSCE waaaaay back and your allowed to use calculators on specific questions. Whats wrong with that? I can see why China don't use calculators because Chinese people are born with a calculator brain.
 
Implicitly allowing notes is kind of dumb. If they want to allow students to bring notes then just let them bring notes, hand written or otherwise.

Alternatively they could not allow notes and just provide a page of notes (which test takers could see when practicing) and leave it at that.

Instead you can bring notes but only if you "hide" them in a calculator.
 
CountZero said:
Implicitly allowing notes is kind of dumb. If they want to allow students to bring notes then just let them bring notes, hand written or otherwise.

Alternatively they could not allow notes and just provide a page of notes (which test takers could see when practicing) and leave it at that.

Instead you can bring notes but only if you "hide" them in a calculator.
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'Instead you can bring notes but only if you "hide" them in a calculator.' teachers arent dumb they check everryones calsalcultors
 
Cappuccino said:
'Instead you can bring notes but only if you "hide" them in a calculator.' teachers arent dumb they check everryones calsalcultors
Click to expand...

Well according to OP you can "hide" notes on calculators for the SATs which is what I am replying to so I'm not sure where teachers come in to play here.

But if you want to talk about "teachers aren't dumb" then I just think of the TI-89 when I was in college. It did symbolic mathematics yet no professor or TA had any clue. By the time I got to grad school they were banned from tests but by then how many hundreds of exams were taken by people using calculators that did a huge chunk of the work that they intended for you to do by hand.
 
DrPizza said:
Test that many universities and colleges use for determining admission.

Holy crap - you do NOT have to clear the memory on calculators. You can program in all the notes you want, and it's, apparently, acceptable.
Click to expand...
Oh, no, it is almost like the real world where you are allowed to use the proper tools for the job. We can't let anyone going to college have that type of ability!
 
CountZero said:
Well according to OP you can "hide" notes on calculators for the SATs which is what I am replying to so I'm not sure where teachers come in to play here.

But if you want to talk about "teachers aren't dumb" then I just think of the TI-89 when I was in college. It did symbolic mathematics yet no professor or TA had any clue. By the time I got to grad school they were banned from tests but by then how many hundreds of exams were taken by people using calculators that did a huge chunk of the work that they intended for you to do by hand.
Click to expand...

HP's had all kinds of physics and chemistry formulas pre-programmed in. Would occasionally be handy, and would save some time memorizing formulas, but you still had to know which one was appropriate to use in a given scenario.
 
Any time I used notes in class when I wasn't supposed to (i.e. write really tiny on a small piece of paper and slip it in my calculator case, if you could use calcs) I also never ended up even referring to them. That doesn't mean everyone is like me, but I don't think it's really that big of a "loophole" to not be clearing the calc memory.
 
The SAT is a trick question test. There are no difficult problems, just a large number of easy problems you need to complete in a fixed amount of time. It would probably end up hurting a student who tries to look up some formula or equation on a calculator.
 
I did calculus back in high school without a calculator. Was not fun. maybe it was trigonometry ..i can't remember, so long ago.
 
dainthomas said:
HP's had all kinds of physics and chemistry formulas pre-programmed in. Would occasionally be handy, and would save some time memorizing formulas, but you still had to know which one was appropriate to use in a given scenario.
Click to expand...

:heart; phoenix
 
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