Calculator Flaw Forces Recall in Virginia 687
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign (Score:2)
But, by simply saying that since you are expected to know how to do something on your own, you have to do it on your own, you side-step the problem. We used to have tests in calculus, where part was calculator-allowed, and par
Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.engineering.ualberta.ca/nav03.cfm?nav0
I graduated last year however, so the policy never affected me because my class complained enough so that only the people after us were stuck with this policy.
And the approved list was much stupider at the start as well, with calculators like the TI-82 (which I used to have) and the TI-83 not allowed, but the TI-83 plus WAS allowed.
It seems they've pulled the stick out of their ass a little bit.
No HP 48's? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:2)
I remember in my tests there was always more marks for working than for the answer, and even if the answer was wrong you'd still get marks for correct working, for example if you made a typo at the start but were then consistent.
Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign (Score:4, Insightful)
0.25 == 1/4. I do not now, nor have I ever needed a calculator or a method for working this out.
Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign (Score:5, Insightful)
5x=20. Show your work.
For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the fuck they were talking about. My work? x is obviously 4. You'd have to be a retard not to get it, right? What "work" is there to show? They said "No, show that you're dividing both sides by 5" and I was just baffled - well it's OBVIOUS that both sides need to be divided by 5! Do people really need to be *told* that?
Then they tossed up a quadratic equation on the board, and suddenly I saw the value of showing my work - namely that sometimes you will be dealing with problems that aren't as obvious as turning
Personally, I work best with a practical approach - giving me "real" problems to solve rather than things that are too easy helps greatly because I don't wind up resenting the use of a seemingly pointless technique when the answer is obvious.
When I was teaching my nephew math, I always started him off with non-obvious problems so he'd *have* to learn this stuff inside and out. It seems to have worked - he's now an associate professor in the mathematics/compsci department of a rather nice university.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not really about the math. (Score:5, Insightful)
This line of thinking is exactly why cashiers can't give correct change when the power goes out, the network is down, or you give them odd change so you get rid of change and get whole dollars back.
Setting the bar as low as you suggest begs the question: Why teach anything that you can use a calculator for?
IMO, the point isn't even the math. It's about teaching someone the basics of thinking through a problem without pulling the answer from somewhere.
<soapbox>We're already teaching our kids that there are no losers. Giving them the lesson that you don't have to understand and solve simple problems is just another step towards a society of people who, in Real Life®, find themselves facing problems without the help of a cheat sheet and simply wait for someone else to solve them (which eventually will stop happening).</soapbox>
Re:It's not really about the math. (Score:3, Insightful)
Change is not a complex calculation. It's a lookup and a running total. You take the 10's complement of the smallest non-zero digit. You take the 9's complement of the rest of the larger digits. You start grabbing change and keep a running total, checking that total with each piece of money you pick up that you're not grabbing too much.
Cashiers do that sort of thing enough that any one of them with two
Re:It's not really about the math. (Score:4, Informative)
He's not begging the question. Begging the question is a rhetorical tactic that involves use of an essentially circular argument, making a proof reliant on itself, but, he's only stated an opinion.
The fact of the matter is conversion of non-repeating decimals to fractions is simple enough, and this is fundamental to the understanding of fractions, a rudimentary mathematical skill that any person learned at elementary level or better should be adept at, just like every reasonably educated person should know what the Constitution is, know a little history, plus some of the general basic ideas in literature, reading, writing, biology, and the physical sciences..
We are not talking rocket science or even things so advanced as trig here, kids should learn this. It does not matter if they will need to use this particular item from mathematics often in their work, but they might later find the skill was very useful to have.
There are a lot of skills kids should learn. Some of them will be useful in their lives, some of them they might not be useful. But there is no way to tell for sure in advance, and certainly they won't be useful if never acquired (probably it means they lost some benefit or satisfaction they would have had if they had learned the skill).
If educators in Virginia have found that their students tend to have difficulty converting decimals to fractions (or otherwise dealing with fractions), then they surely should be testing them on the related skills.
There are more important and fundamental topics, yes, but the notion of fractions and the understanding of how to get them how to work with them, etc, are far from unimportant.
Calculators can be a crutch (Score:5, Insightful)
I studied in the Indian CBSE [wikipedia.org] and AISSE system of education. We weren't allowed any calculators at all, for any subject. We had to use Log (logarithm) tables. Essentially we would convert any problem into base 10 log and then solve it from there. It was supposed to be "easier" because multiplication and division change into addition and subtraction. Exponentiation just becomes division.
Sure, I hated it at the time. It was a total bitch to do anything, but as a result, I got really good at my arithmetic. Even today I can remember the log base 10 values for 2, 3, 4, and 5...
Even in university, I had friends who had the TI-92 which could do symbolic integration. I had a lowly Casio model. I didn't mind, because I understood calculus and did everything by hand.
Basically, learning to do things by hand is a good skill to have. So you don't rely on a calculator where things happen "magically". Of course, when there's a time crunch, a powerful calculator helps, but it's still nice to know how things work under the hood.
Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign (Score:5, Interesting)
x = 0.4523232323...
100x = 45.232323232323...
99x = 44.78
9900x = 4478
x = 4478/9900
Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign (Score:3, Interesting)
x = 0.99999.....
10x = 9.99999......
9x = 9
x = 1
0.99999.... = 1
Re:Next To Go: '+' Sign (Score:3, Insightful)
I never had a math teacher that I respected who didn't ask his class to, "Show all of your work" for any given problem.
If the "work" seems to consist of writing the question, and then writing the answer, you failed. In this case, it's a simple matter of the teachers not wanting to have to grade appropriately, or failure of them to test approprately.
Uh, isn't it TI (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's right. (Score:5, Funny)
It is suspected that Microsoft may make other recalls in light of this recent events, including the Playstation 2, Google's search engine, and the United States government.
In other news, any of you that have hot girlfriends (yeah...you're probably not real, but I can pretend) will have to hand them over. I'm recalling them.
log books (Score:5, Funny)
Someone else asked "So WTF is with these log books?". He got detention.
Teachers... you've got to love them. Well, someone does.
Re:log books (Score:2)
Re:log books (Score:2)
Being able to hand-calculate logarithms: Not So Important.
The problem I found (Score:5, Insightful)
Got a similar thing in trig, we were required to do operations using sines and cosines without a calculator. Now this would be fine if it was the 90 degree incriments, or maybe 30 or something but it wasn't. It was doing arbitrary ones with a lookup graph. Errr, ok, what's the value of that? You can memorize common ones, espically the 90 degree incriments and it can help make sense of a lot of things. However I'm not going to remeber even an gross approximation for 14 degrees because I just don't need to.
That is the real problem I think is that many math teachers aren't very good at math. I don't mean that they can't do basic math, I mean they don't really understand math. A teacher should ideally have a full understanding of what they teaching, only then can they really understand what is and isn't important to try and impart on those that are studying it only in passing.
My best math teacher was like this, he was a mathemitician before he was a teacher and taught precalc at the community college. I ended up having to take that rather than the normal highschool precalc course because of a conflict in schedule. Now the funny thing was his tests were open book, open note, calculators allowed. However despite that, I learned more in that math class than in any other. He really understood math, adn could explain something to you in different ways, and demonstrate it in different ways until you truly understood it.
I think too much blame is heaped on calculators. People like to foggily remember a past where there were no calculators, and everyone was good at math. Turns out that wasn't so much the case. There were still plenty of students that did poorly and, funny thing, the levels of math being taught weren't as advanced.
So the solution isn't to ban calculators and just do lots of tedious calculations on paper, the solution is to keep the calculators and use them as tools to teach math. Not teach how to crank away on numbers, teach a real understanding of math. Don't teach kids how to factor polynomials, teach them WHY you factor polynomials, what you are actually doing, what the equations mean. Get them to the level of real understanding where they can be presented with a novel problem and apply their knowledge to solve it.
We don't need good little calculators. As good a calculator as you can teach a person to be, I can get a better calculator out of a machine. What we need are people who understand what math is about who can take it and apply it to problems, using the calculators to do the grunt work. If you can take an equation and integrate it by hand, I'm not impressed. My TI-89 can do that and faster than you. However if you can look at an irregular container and use calculus to figure out how to make a container of that irregular shape hold a certian volume with the aid of a calculator, then I'm impressed.
Re:The problem I found (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesetingly enough, now that i'm in college, again some of my best math teachers are in the engineering department. Some of the worst are in the math department, but that is perhaps another discussion.
Re:log books (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:log books (Score:3, Insightful)
Calculators have cratered at least two Mars missions.
Ok... not the same thing.
Slide rules rule.
A teacher you don't have to love... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:log books (Score:3, Insightful)
That doesn't free us from having to understand what we're doing though. Even if the calculator can do the math for you, you still need to understand that with 12 guests, each eating around 150g of cheese you're going to need 12*150g cheese.
You need to understand that 10% a year for 5 years is *not* in any way the same as 50%. The calculator won't help you
Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously though, I've been against giving calculators to grade school kids for a long time. It's all part of the dumbing down of our society. Let them learn how to do math properly, [I]then[/I] teach them how to use a calculator when they start studying higher maths that actually need one.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
If you just give them bbcode right from the beginning, they'll think they can just always use that, and not preview their posts.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
s/lean/learn/
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
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) an
Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
I couldn't disagree more. I have a BS in mathematics and the more math I do, the more I need a calculator. Why? Very simple - as one gets into higher math and begins to think more abstractly, one wants to worry less and less about numbers.
While many mathematicians don't need them becuase they have gotten very good at arithmetic, this isn't true of all of us. I'm laughably bad at arithmetic and have struggled with it most of my life. But calculators let me overcome that.
Saying that mathematics doesn't need calculators because they should be able to do it by hand is like saying astronomers don't need automatic telescopes because they should be able to observe by hand.
But you're not *learning* math when you need your calculator. You're just solving a problem.
I have a B.S. in math as well, and there wasn't a single time that I needed a calculator learning math. I also have a B.S. in physics and a lot of the time I didn't need a calculator then either. In fact, I had physics instructors that would deliberately give out problems that would overload calculators of the time to reinforce the basic algebraic solutions to the problems. Turns out solving the problem algebraically often times is faster than punching in the numbers and you always get a more accurate answer - no rounding.
So, astronomers don't need automatic telescopes to LEARN astronomy, only to make it faster when they need to do it. But they damn well better know how to track a star if the damn thing breaks.
Calculators don't let you get past the first stage of learning - basic resitation of facts: 88 * 112 = 9856. It doesn't allow you to understand what is at work there, to see different ways of solving the problem, to teach others, to develop new ways of doing it. How many calculator students would know to just turn that into (100 -12) * (100 + 12) which is easy to do in your head if you recognize that it solves as 100*100 - 12*12? The arithmetic you've known since 2nd grade and the algebra since 8th grade, but anything much beyond 12*12 and even a lot of 800 SAT winners will reach for their HP.
The problem for even mathematicians is that the calculators make us lazy too. While we're caught up in differential geometry, we start to forget how easy it is to spot a middle-school math problem.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Worst Kind (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not really (Score:3, Interesting)
crippled as marketing? (Score:2)
Re:crippled as marketing? (Score:2)
Re:crippled as marketing? (Score:2)
A flaw? (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:A flaw? (Score:2)
Nothing unless you are being tested on fractions.
A kid who can't add 3/5 + 5/6 without a calculator will have a hard time solving for x in this equation when he gets to algebra.
x/5 + 2x/3 = 13
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A flaw? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually it seems to me like the engineers figured out "aha, we'll just remove the key" and not realize that (due to the way the keyboard is wired up and the way the software scans it) it is possible to make it think you pressed other keys. I figure they wanted to save themselves the hassle of changing the controller chip design, or they were just lazy or too stupid.
1 2
| |
A-B-3
| |
C-D-4
| |
Take a keyscanning algorith that works scanning left-to-right columns and up-to-down rows, that decodes the fi
i dont get it... (Score:3, Informative)
TI, not HP (Score:2)
And they are recalling 160,000 calculators, not 11,000.
So they're testing on calculator knowledge. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have the skills, then using a calculator makes you faster.
If all you have is the knowledge of where the key to press is, then you won't be able to check your work.
This brings back memories (Score:5, Interesting)
Me too... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Me too... (Score:4, Funny)
I take it this happened before the days of modern graphing calculators?
My physics and calc classes let us use our calculators (I had an original TI-85, overclocked via the capacitor removal trick, of course), and you can quite easily fit the formulae needed for six courses in 32k of memory...
Of course, that made me wonder why they didn't just let us do the tests open-book - To which, I discovered the answer that most professors give you test questions that come straight from the unassigned chapter questions (the better ones will actually change the numbers, but still the same question).
I couldn't, however, fit six classes worth of chapter questions in 32k of memory.
And for the record - This didn't count as cheating. The math and (real)science professors realized we could store massive amounts of info in our calculators, and just didn't care.
But boy-oh-boy did my intro to cultural anthrpology prof look at me funny when I pulled out a calculator...
Re:This brings back memories (Score:3, Funny)
No, I won't comment on why I had the sliderule in my bag. There was a perfectly good reason, I assure you...
No, calculators are different. (Score:5, Insightful)
That depends upon what you're testing.
If it was basic multiplication, that would be fine. Once you can multiple 2x3 on paper, you can multiply everything from 1x1 to 9x9. The technique does not change at all.
The same goes for 12x11 and 36x156. Once the initial concept is understood all further applications can be reduced to that basic concept.
The same with fractions and decimals.
But when you allow a calculator, you are NOT testing their knowledge of the basic techniques. Multiplying 99x2314 means learning a more advanced technique with paper and pencil.
With a calculator, it is the same as 2x3.
No, "regurgitation" is the memorization of items. If someone can memorize the multiplication tables up to quadruple digits, there isn't much you can do to "teach" that person.
What "critical thinking" is there in accepting what a machine tells you?
But the calculator only gives them answers. Most students would rather use a calculator to "just write answers down to a hundred questions".
Which is my point. Using a calculator at that grade is NOT testing their knowledge of the material.
Yep, and the pencil and paper will NOT provided ANY information that is not already in the kid's head.
Not if the kid does NOT know the technique for adding 2+2.
Yet with a calculator, it is possible to get the answer and still NOT know the technique.
No, that is called "lowering the bar".
Two kids...
one how understands the concepts and techniques
and
one who does not.
Both sit down, with calculators and complete 100 multiplication problems.
Both score the same.
Both get 100% correct.
THAT is the problem.
It might. But more likely, it will be used to mask a core problem.
Which, in more sensible terms means "masks the kid's failure to grasp the concepts".
...
Which was the point I made above.
Sure, the calculator will allow a kid who does not know how to do basic math to score a perfect grade on a test covering basic math
Okay, now you're completely off it.
Re:No, calculators are different. (Score:3, Interesting)
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 tha
The problem with that (Score:3, Interesting)
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 algo
Re:No, calculators are different. (Score:3, Insightful)
Old world + new world. (Score:2)
New world (to which I subscribe): recall the fucking tests!
ruined (Score:5, Funny)
No Calculators Util College (Score:2)
This even makes my current career a pain in the ass as i have to subnet every single day.
Students should be forced to use slide rules and pen and paper. There is no educational adv
Re:No Calculators Util College (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No Calculators Util College (Score:5, Insightful)
However, once you're done with integral and differential calculus, they're very handy, just like a graphing or symbolic calculator is very handy after algebra. They're just tools, designed to let skilled users work more quickly. The problem is we're putting the tools into the hands of those who won't benefit from them yet. Here's your lightsaber, young padawan; now go slice people with it, don't worry about that force-factoring thing.
Re:No Calculators Util College (Score:3, Funny)
Re:No Calculators Util College (Score:2)
Assuming you and I were both taught poorly and learned little, you can't do math mentally but had good test scores (benefits the school) while
Time to reconsiderer teaching...? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, maybe it's time to reconsider if students need pencil-and-paper in a techno age that even a mobil phone has a calculator.
Why not show them what they can achieve with the calculator rather than how to achieve what the calculator does?
Re:Time to reconsiderer teaching...? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't simply create technology, forget how it works, and assume it will work forever. That's the basis for plenty of
Re:Time to reconsiderer teaching...? (Score:2)
I recall a novel about a guy from today arriving to the future.
The world had become dependant on calculators, and nobody knew the basics operations. So this guy comes, shows them how to do a square root or division, and the people were amazed at him knowing the secret knowledge. They would test his assertions on the calculators, and say "hey, it works!"
Besides - calculators in tests are a trap
Re:Time to reconsiderer teaching...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because mobile phones and calculators aren't as fast or as accurate, and they can cause some serious damage to the mind.
Seriously, while we can't all be expected to multiply massive numbers in our heads and find arbitrary roots of numbers mentally, the more math we can do without resorting to pulling out an external tool, the better. Good mental math techniques have beaten out calculators---with the overhead of punching in the numbers and making sure you didn't make a mistake, to say nothing of having to dig through a pocket or a purse and pull the thing out, then in the case of a mobile phone flip through all of the menus to get to the calculator application---time and time again. Further, mental math is much less error-prone; if you're working on an external device, it is very easy to press the wrong operator and come up with a completely screwed answer, or worse, to press a wrong number and wind up with something that sounds reasonable but is in fact off. Regardless of how good human interface gets, nothing that depends on human input will ever beat the speed of human thought, and calculators invariably add another point of failure to the process.
Even aside from that, knowing "how to achieve what the calculator does" is fundamentally important in understanding higher-math concepts. You might be able to commit to memory that performing x function on y set of numbers yields z result, but if you never fully grok why that result is yielded, then your understanding will be severely limited. The commitment to memory of compartmentalized and seemingly unrelated facts and figures, despite being so overused by primary and secondary schooling systems in most civilized countries, is an inefficient tool compared to concept learning, and will ultimately lead to a society of people utterly incapable of innovation for lack of awareness of the why behind any of the many hows that they have memorized.
In short, calculators provide no benefit over a strong set of mental tools in any of the tasks to which they are set until after the completion of at least secondary-level education, they stunt the mind, and they ultimately contribute to society's decline. Using a calculator for things that are genuinely too difficult to do by head is fine, and indeed the mathematical community stands to benefit from results yielded by calculators, but for things as fundamental as what they are used for in most current school systems (addition, multiplication, division, subtraction, et al), calculators are not only pointless but harmful.
Simple plan! (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Make sure the fraction stage was in correct part of the test.
3) Ummm... Privatize?
(By the way, TFA says TI, not HP.)
Expensive? (Score:4, Funny)
And I suppose they will give them back!? (Score:5, Insightful)
just asking
Re:And I suppose they will give them back!? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And I suppose they will give them back!? (Score:4, Informative)
Flaw? (Score:3, Funny)
Hello? (Score:4, Funny)
It reminds me of that 200 mpg car urban legend.
LK
That goes to show you (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Used to do stuff like this (Score:2)
State issued calculators? (Score:2)
Tech in the classroom (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was in school, I remember thinking how cool it was that I could use a calculator in 9th grade math. Then after trying to use one, not only did I find that I could do it faster without it, but that I learned the math better. I carried that attitude through calculus, and I'm very glad that I did.
Now we have a generation of kids that can't do basic math, can't spell, and don't know grammer. What a great help that tech has been for them in school! All the teaching aids in the world don't turn a bad teacher into someone that can educate your children. Don't let elementary school kids write papers on the computer, they don't get handwriting, spelling, or grammer practice. They just learn the computer will fix it for them. Don't let them use calculators for their math, because they just learn that calculators will do math for them, so they don't need to know it.
There is a proper way to use these things in the classroom. A word processor in English class is wrong, just as a calculator is in basic math class. Once you get to a Lit class or advanced math, the tools are useful in teaching more effectively.
Also, Someone mentioned log books in another post as being a shortcut tool. So are sliderules, but try doing logs sanely without one or the other. What you learned to use logs for was a shortcut to doing long-hand division and multiplications... after you learned how to do that math anyway.
If you really want to cheat... (Score:2)
flaw or "flaw"? (Score:2)
Off-Topic(?): Decimal to Fraction Algorithm? (Score:2)
Basically, given a fractional value between 0 and 1, find two integers whose ratio most closely approximates the fractional value, and which will fit in a given bit width. This sort of thing is useful when trying to compute the integer coefficients to stuff into the registers of a PLL clock gene
Re:Off-Topic(?): Decimal to Fraction Algorithm? (Score:3, Informative)
Re-fractionate (Score:2)
Drop your god damn prices (Score:2)
Impressive school system (Score:2)
I didn't need one (nor get one) until I was thought physics and chemistry where they have all these weird kind of not-so-easy-to-add/substract/multiply/divide values.
Wanted: Stupid Kid With Calculator (Score:2)
If tests allow calculators, all they test is the financial ability of students to buy calculators.
Again, Timothy? (Score:2)
The calculator shown in TFA looks a lot like the TI30XA. It's listed on Amazon at $10 [amazon.com]. And you can bet the school district got a volume discount. So expensive? Hardly.
Misinformed editorialism aside, I tthink it's great that they're giving middle school kids calculators. By that time they should (emphasis on "should") be we
Question the wisdom of working by hand (Score:3, Insightful)
Learning to do things *efficently* by hand (as you would in a standardized test) does not really give understanding. Instead the students should be asked to reason about the process of changing decimals into fractions or heck just teach them basic logic instead. Spending time drilling algorithms into their heads that they can always just turn to calculators to do anyway is a real waste of time and turns kids off math and science.
Besides, knowledge of the algorithm is easy once you have understanding. However, not only does this empahsis on rote learning waste time it actually seems to give kids a mental block to real understanding. By the time these kids reach college they expect that courses (or at least math courses) will be just rote learning. Not only do they expect it but they will flounder if this safe pattern is broken making it nearly impossible to teach anything but rote facts. Indeed the students will usually prefer a huge amount of memorization to something requiring real understanding.
TI... ...IP (Score:3, Insightful)
The kid discovered that by pressing two keys at once he was able to trigger a function which had been intentionally removed from the key matrix. How is this any different than any other sort of frowned-upon reverse engineering? Sure he was "only 12" so maybe it's "cute" and "using his head", but what happens when he turns 18 and discovers that he can use a Sharpie on a CD, or a hex-editor on an application? Suddenly he is no longer a hero, but a villan... I mean for *$%^-sake, TI actually sent him a graphing calculator for free... When was they last time TI sent the Linux/BSD wireless chipset hackers a free Prism dev kit Hell, even just the fscking manual would be nice.
It's this double standard $%^& that really irks me.
a curmudgeon speaks... (Score:5, Insightful)
One problem with calculators is that students believe the results and never bother to see if they make sense. I graded papers for an engineering class, I was amazed how many students thought because you get 8 digits in the calculator that the result is that precise; or would get impossible answers (because of a math error) and write them down. They never developed a sense about the calculation, couldn't estimate to check results and relied on the calculator for the answer. You see this in the inability to give change if you add a coin to the payment amount after they've rung it up; or when they try to give you your twenty back along with 17 dollars because they entered 50 instead of twenty for cash tendered.
Get rid of your spell checker. (Score:2)