Calculator Flaw Forces Recall in Virginia

Jivecat writes "CNN is reporting that TI is recalling 11,000 calculators issued to students in Virginia because of a flaw that would give them an unfair advantage on standardized tests. A 12-year-old discovered that by pressing two keys at once, the calculators will convert decimals to fractions. The tests require the students to know how to do this with pencil-and-paper." So the calculator is being recalled because it's not crippled enough. Maybe it's a good time to question the wisdom of issuing expensive electronics to students in the first place, though I'm sure the calculator companies would rather you didn't.

Next To Go: '+' Sign

[geomon]

Seriously, isn't this a bit of an overreation?

So what if the calculators make it easier to convert from decimal to fraction? Train *all* of the students to use the feature and its value as an advantage.

As for the issue of using a pencil and paper, then that is how you verify that they *know* how to make the conversion and didn't rely on the two-key method.

Bureaucracy masked as education.

A flaw?

[guardiangod]

A 12-year-old discovered that by pressing two keys at once, the calculators will convert decimals to fractions.

You sure it is a flaw? Sounds more like a hidden function by a bored programmer to me. Also, what's wrong with the fraction function? My Casio FX-260 S Calculator that I used in ~grade also has a fraction function. No one ever complain about that :/

That goes to show you

[ironicsky]

The education system in some places is pure crap.

In my junior high/high school years(7-12) We rarely got to use calculators. Even in our pre-calculus course, if we got caught using a calculator during a test, exam or inclass assignment we were as good as failed.

This wasn't decades ago, I graduated 2002.

People shouldnt rely on calculators to do simple math like fractions.

Re:Hmm

[HyperBlazer]

Let them learn how to do math properly, then teach them how to use a calculator when they start studying higher maths that actually need one.

Erm, just which "higher maths" need calculators? I just finished a degree in mathematics, and I was allowed to use a calculator on exactly one test during the entire degree: Numerical Analysis (that is, the approximation of solutions using computational methods).

In high school, I learned how to use a calculator, which let me learn the minimum in calculus (etc) and still get good grades. So I never learned it right, until, after my first degree, I came back for a second one in maths.

I'd just leave it "let them learn to do maths properly."

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This brings back memories

[Raul654]

In my undergraduate electromagnetics class, the professor was adamant that he would never allow calculators on his exams, but he'd generiously allow anyone to use a slide rule (assuming we could find them and learn how to operate them).

Re:log books

[erick99]

I remember (early 70's) the uproar over how calculators would be the end of students knowing how to use a slide rule. I can't say that I remember how to use a slide rule anymore but it was a cool sorta thing considering that it didn't rely on batteries and were relatively inexpensive. Still, I do prefer calculators. I suppose the advent of slide rules upset the abacus advocates....

Re:ruined

[jazman_777]

seriously though, who is buying calculators for kids learning basic math?

My wife and I homeschool. I do the math with our 10-year old daughter. No calculator. For crying out loud, how hard is it to learn how to use a calculator? One day, max? She's not missing a thing. She'll learn how to use it when we get to trig, I suppose.

We do subject her to a standardized test annually. I helped administer it to some older kids--there was a section in the test for those using calculators. We weren't using them, so we ignored it. These kids zipped through anyway. They can make change in their heads, which is a rare skill these days.

I'm Old School: Ban the Calculators!

Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign

[muszek]

I think they cripple students by giving them calculators during important tests. Let them use it during classes (for performance reasons), but make sure they can multiply, divide, add, substract on paper or "in head" (sorry, I don't know proper English term). The only way to make sure is to require those skills at some important step (a final exam being a good example). You can't do those simple things - you fail.

And I don't accept that "you don't need to be able to count, you have calculators" crappy argument. It trains your brain and you don't always have a calculator nearby.

I used to have a strict math teacher in high school. He would call your name, gave you a simple calculating task and count to 3 (which took like 6 seconds).

-- Mateusz. Come to the blackboard
-- Square root from 5329
-- One...
-- Two...
-- err...
-- Three. 73. You failed. F

I bet most kids nowdays would say it's impossible to count it. I got shitloads of F's this way but I'm incredibly glad. Don't have to click KDE_thingy --> Utilities --> Calculator all the time or panick when I'm outdoors and need to calculate something.

hey timothy, read the article

[cheezus]

these aren't regular models, they are specifically made to give the students access to only what is allowed on the test. TI goofed.

and c'mon... $10 is "expensive electronics?" It's not like they have the 3D graphic calculators with the gameboy emulator.

Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign

[shobadobs]

You forgot turning repeating decimals into fractions.

What is 0.4523232323 as a fraction?

Well, it's easy; the answer's 45/100 + 23/9900, and from there it's regular simplification.

But "everybody" knows how to turn fractions into decimals; it's just long division, whereas with repeating decimals there's a trick.

A teacher you don't have to love...

[PCM2]

From TFA:

"His fellow students were so proud of him and congratulatory. They thought it was really, really cool. They didn't call him a nerd or anything," said Michael Bolling, a school official in Chesterfield County.

Damn, Mike, that's cold! Why don't you pick on somebody your own size, instead of a 12-year-old??

No HP 48's?

[Barbarian]

http://www.engineering.ualberta.ca/nav03.cfm?nav03 =19343&nav02=18510&nav01=18439

I took Engineering school about 300 km south, and we were still allowed the HP 48 GX then. Experimentation showed that the reliable communication range was about six inches. If you were that close to your fellow student during an exam, you would already be under suspicion.

I previously had a TI-85 when I went through high school, ending back in 1995. It had the infamous decimal-> fraction conversion.

Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign

[jfern]

Another way to think of it:
x = 0.4523232323...
100x = 45.232323232323...
99x = 44.78

9900x = 4478
x = 4478/9900

Re:Other TI Flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

That shit pissed me off, because I used to code random stuff on my TI82 (games and such) and I felt the teacher had no right to force me to clear the memory on the calculator that I own. But no, some teachers won't even allow you to put the calculator up and take the test sans calculator, they force you to let them erase it. Fucking fascists.

I had a damn good self-hacked version of Tetris, and my fucking biology teacher erased it (yes, you heard me, biology, not math - she merely went around, checked if anyone had a programmable calculator, and erased the memory). Fuck that cocksucking bitch.

Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign

[Khyber]

In Tennessee, where I live, it;s common to see "Property of (name here) County" on the calculators. Now in Memphis, that school system I graduated from (not saying much there,) allows you to use calculators, but they don't teach the basic math principles that go/are involved with using a calculator. So while these students may know how to operate a calculator, they have *NO* clue how to do it on paper.

While technology is a good thing, I fail to see how exposing students/teaching students specifically with technology is a useful thing. After all, if you can't understand the written basics/principles, how are you going to know how to use a calculator for other functions asides from your basic math? Input the formulas in a program and cheat?

Our school system even allows a student with the same county-approved calculator (but bought on their own) To use it in a test. Who's to say this student didn't program every formula they needed to knwo into the calculator just so they could get ahead in class?

The point I guess I'm trying to make is that calculators should be banned from school, and those that cannot deal with solving a problem by hand, given enough time, shoudl not graduate. It would, to some degree, cut down on the ignorance we have in our school systems today.

To reinforce the point... I asked my local "illegalities" dealer what's 3/4 of 28 grams. He told me, "If I had a calculator I could find out." And this guy "graduated" from high school with a B- avereage. How the hell do you suppose that happened?

Re:Not really

[oostevo]

That's very untrue for Differential Equations. Most of the differential equations that exist can't be solved by analytical methods (i.e., you can't use calculus to get a pretty analytical solution to it). Many of those unsolvable problems, though, can be solved numerically - i.e. using computers to get numerical solutions at certain points. I'd really like to see you try to do such a thing by hand with no calculator or computer. (Before you say "but you don't learn that sort of math in school!" I'm taking a course in it)

Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign

[Anonymous Coward]

A math teacher who completed Algebra and nothing else could probably teach what he learned about Algebra to a class of students. But more education in mathematics will of course help that teacher to impart a mote complete understanding of what he is teaching. Compare a high school Algebra textbook to a College Advanced Algebra textbook. The person who has learned from the latter and understood the material in such a class will certainly be able to do a better job of imparting a more complete picture of the subject in the lower level math class. Go further and pursue a Masters in the subject and your mathematic ability will be so complete you'll be able to answer any question about the subject and probably do a damn fine job teaching others to teach basic Algebra. You can of course learn this stuff on your own. But a Masters in math who has studied Algebra in depth is going to be in a very good position to teach not just the math but how to manage time and other matters of academic pursuit necessary to make a student a more complete person. The reality is I am as bitter as you are about the Academy in practice but saying that to have a Masters degree holders teach high school students is somehow a bad thing is just plain wrong. On average a Masters student in Math is going to be more experienced, more prepared, and more able to impart a complete picture of the subject matter to a lower level student. Intelligence -- smartness -- tends to be independent of these things, though the correlation would often seem strong.

Re:It's not really about the math.

[TechieMiriam]

I grew up working in fast food. I've worked at Hardee's, Burger King, Culver's, and Wawa. I can tell you this: Change is not a complex calculation. I know how to count back change because my first manager made sure to train me in counting back change from the cost of the order to the total amount of money given. That was in 1999. In every other food service job I've worked in since then, most of my coworkers have been unable to count back change without the dollar total staring them in the face. They always acted as robots and just handed out whatever money the register said was owed, not even checking to make sure they entered the amount in correctly. That scared me. In other words, you are wrong. In most cases Cashiers do NOT "do that sort of thing enough that any one of them with two braincells to rub together has figured it out." They use a completely different method of counting back change. The "read the number and count up the cash" method.

Re:No, calculators are different.

[Xyrus]

At grade school level, calculators could be looked upon as a black-box. They know how to input and get the output.

But the kids do not know what goes on inside the black-box. They have set and get methods to access the data, but lack the understanding.

Therefore, a child does not "know" multiplication.

Along similar lines, programmers do this everyday. They may not know the algorithm for MPEG4, but they can use a library to access the data and manipulate it they way they want.

The big difference here is that basic math is a fundamental life skill, while knowing the MPEG4 algorithm is not.

In life, there are some things that should be learned the hard way (for some, it is the only way they learn). Other things do not need to be.

I wouldn't expect any random person I meet to be able to implent the MPEG4 codec, but I would expect them to be able to tell me what 10x10 is.

Without a calculator.

~X~

Re:log books

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still in my twenties, but I use a sliderule. Why? Just for the hell of it. As a bonus, it's been a great conversation starter with some of the more senior engineers I work with, which really helps with networking (the social kind, not the computer kind).

The problem with that

[Moraelin]

You are of course right about maths being a valuable life skill, but if I'm allowed to nitpick, I'd say the same applies to all blackboxes: before one can use them right, one needs at least _some_ understanding of how it works inside. The same applies IMHO to programming.

The line of thinking "oh, we'll give programmers a bunch blackboxes and they don't have to know the algorithms behind them" is what got us saddled with co-workers who can't code worth crap. Yes, it's not needed to know the exact MPEG4 algorithm, but without knowledge of at least the basics, well, that's how we got at the point where 3 out of 4 "programmers" can't program.

I see _consultants_ advocating using two arrays for large data sets instead of a hash table. Presumably because they never learned that one is O(1) and one is O(n).

I've seen _two_ co-workers end up debugging into a HashMap (because they were utterly lost when finding their own bugs) and go "Java is broken! It replaced my item in the array with another! My data is lost!" Turns out that they had no fucking clue what a linked list is, and that merely a new node was added to the front of one.

And then there's the one I fondly call Wally, who was attempting basically this:


public void nuller(int x) {
x = 0;
}

public void testNuller() {
int x = 1;
nuller(x);
assertTrue("x should be 0", x == 0);
}


Then did it again later. The concept of "call by value" was utterly lost on him.

Or pointers? Java's syntax hides pointers, making them basically a blackbox. Something that just happens behind the scenes for you. Unfortunately I see people bitten in the ass everyday by utter lack of knowledge of what a pointer is and how it works.

Or then there's security. I've seen consultants from a big corporation implementing a system so full of security holes it wasn't even funny. They honestly thought that just slapping together some blackboxes with lots of buzzwords made them safe. It didn't.

They failed to grasp even basic concepts as "what if the user edits the '?user_id=1234' to '?user_id=0' in the URL and makes themselves super-user?" Yes, that sad. They failed to understand basic concepts like non-repudiation: when someone deleted their own user from that system, the program would helpfully cascade through all tables and erase all tracks that the user ever existed or ever done anything. They failed to even notice they need to quote the user input, both when displaying it in HTML _and_ when using it in an SQL querry. Etc.

Basically anything that wasn't already built in their blackboxes, they were utterly obvlivious to.

So basically, no, I wouldn't expect a random person off the street to implement MPEG4 either, but I'd expect anyone paid as a programmer to know at least the basics (the equivalent of arithmetic in maths) before they're even given a MPEG4 library and told to add that to a program.

Which brings me back to maths: the same is true for maths and a lot of jobs. Even if one decided that 10x10 isn't needed for Burger King jobs, we're not preparing _all_ kids for that kind of jobs. Expecting someone to understand the more advanced maths used in most engineering or science fields when their knowledge of the basics is just "oh, I push these two buttons on a calculator", is IMHO like building a house without the ground floor.

Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign

[jeremyp]

The most important one is:

x = 0.99999.....

10x = 9.99999......

9x = 9

x = 1

0.99999.... = 1