{"id":73,"date":"2005-03-25T14:40:48","date_gmt":"2005-03-25T14:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/?p=73"},"modified":"2005-03-25T14:40:48","modified_gmt":"2005-03-25T14:40:48","slug":"calculators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/?p=73","title":{"rendered":"Calculators"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/unimodular.net\/blog\/?p=37\" target=\"_blank\">eon<\/a> has brought my attention to <a href=\"http:\/\/talldarkandmysterious.ca\/archives\/2005\/01\/28\/why-invest-in-the-children-when-you-can-invest-in-texas-instruments\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tall, Dark &#038; Mysterious&#8217;s post<\/a> about the use and abuse of graphical calculators which is worth reading.<\/p>\n<p>It mentions the use of calculators on mobile phones etc, but I don&#8217;t allow their use in maths classes because they give the wrong answer (try <img src='\/maths\/latexrender\/pictures\/b817846e057b939a12e9fc2c547e7206.gif' title='1+2 \\times 3' alt='1+2 \\times 3' align=absmiddle> on them or on the Windows standard calculator and you&#8217;ll see what I mean).<\/p>\n<p>The new A level syllabuses don&#8217;t distinguish between scientific and graphical calculators, but both are banned from the first Pure Maths module. It will be fascinating to see how students cope with this.<\/p>\n<p>My Norwegian students all have graphical calculators (mainly Casio which I find difficult to use compared with Texas, though I like Casio&#8217;s scientific calculators) and the only way they are able to solve quadratic equations is to use the calculator, even if the quadratic factorises easily.<\/p>\n<p>Other students, being students, don&#8217;t always bring calculators even when they need them. So when they have to solve <img src='\/maths\/latexrender\/pictures\/c603471ec3af94da4590339bf79cc322.gif' title='\\sin\\left(3x+45^{\\circ}\\right)=0.7,\\  -90^{\\circ} \\leq x \\leq 90^{\\circ}' alt='\\sin\\left(3x+45^{\\circ}\\right)=0.7,\\  -90^{\\circ} \\leq x \\leq 90^{\\circ}' align=absmiddle> I am very tempted to give them old-fashioned <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0521050979\/qid=1111761476\/sr=8-8\/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i8_xgl\/202-8370378-9955030\" target=\"_blank\">four-figure tables<\/a> (which you can still buy!) but instead I give them an old scientific calculator. On those, to find <img src='\/maths\/latexrender\/pictures\/8435d3e1b3b9b37ee4842b23c220daa1.gif' title='\\sin 30' alt='\\sin 30' align=absmiddle>, you have to type <img src='\/maths\/latexrender\/pictures\/30b66f963bf95855a8c54a9a55cafe23.gif' title='30 \\sin' alt='30 \\sin' align=absmiddle> which so flummoxes them that they don&#8217;t forget to bring their own calculator again \ud83d\ude00 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>eon has brought my attention to Tall, Dark &#038; Mysterious&#8217;s post about the use and abuse of graphical calculators which is worth reading. It mentions the use of calculators on mobile phones etc, but I don&#8217;t allow their use in maths classes because they give the wrong answer (try on them or on the Windows [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}