NoPlaceLikeHome Posted June 21, 2016 Share Posted June 21, 2016 I believe in minimal but smart calculator use. What usage is acceptable that will not take away from learning the math? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JanetC Posted June 21, 2016 Share Posted June 21, 2016 Check out the TI 30 XS Multiview scientific calculator. It has the math-print, editable expressions, and cut-n-paste of a TI graphing calculator, but doesn't graph. For a "minimal" scientific calculator, it is very full featured. There are several varieties of TI-30, so the XS Multiview part is important. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arcadia Posted June 21, 2016 Share Posted June 21, 2016 Scientific calculator is all you need for precalculus. For functions, basically these since probably no students use trigonometry tables anymore Log Exponent Sine and inverse sine Cosine and inverse cosine Tangent and inverse tangent I let my boys use the S -> D function on their scientific calculator which converts decimals to fractions and vice versa. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkT Posted June 21, 2016 Share Posted June 21, 2016 Not sure what your two year Precalc covers, but typically some "Curve-Fitting / Modeling with data" is covered in Precalc. You can use any spreadsheet software (look for free) for this activity. I like the TI 36X Pro (inexpensive - no graphing but most everything else) - the only down side is that some of the keys are silver colored and it is hard to see the symbol. Hide the booklet so they don't cheat :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiana Posted June 22, 2016 Share Posted June 22, 2016 Definitely should be doing logs and trig with a calculator other than for certain specific exact values (for example, your kid should NOT need to use a calculator to evaluate log 1 or sin 0). There is no point in doing these with tables. The exact values I'd expect would be anything with a ref angle of 0 30 45 60 90 for trig, anything that's a power of the base for logarithms. They should have some idea of how to estimate (for example, ln 2 < 1 since 2 < e) but that's pretty much enough. There is also absolutely no point in extracting roots by hand although knowing how to estimate is a very valuable skill (for example, sqrt 27.2 is 5 and a bit), and the same with horribly complicated multistep long division. If it's 2349023509346 divided by 32423, really, why. No. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoPlaceLikeHome Posted June 22, 2016 Author Share Posted June 22, 2016 He has a graphing calculator Ti 84 which they only use for certain things. We are reviewing pre-calc topics over summer. School uses Saxon Advanced Mathmatics and and has used saxon algebra 1 and 2 in previous classes. Here is a dumb question-what about prime factorization? My kid always does them by hand since his school did not allow calculators until middle of algebra 2 and since then only for limited functions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vonfirmath Posted June 22, 2016 Share Posted June 22, 2016 He has a graphing calculator Ti 84 which they only use for certain things. We are reviewing pre-calc topics over summer. School uses Saxon Advanced Mathmatics and and has used saxon algebra 1 and 2 in previous classes. Here is a dumb question-what about prime factorization? My kid always does them by hand since his school did not allow calculators until middle of algebra 2 and since then only for limited functions. Calculators do prime factorization now? I'd encourage my kid to continue to do it themselves. It's fun! Well, I think its fun. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daijobu Posted June 22, 2016 Share Posted June 22, 2016 Calculators do prime factorization now? I'd encourage my kid to continue to do it themselves. It's fun! Well, I think its fun. I think so, too! If you need to use a calculator, either you need to learn some divisibility rules or the number is too large with too many large primes. (Then you can just google "prime factorization of XXX") I believe the AoPS Intro NT and PreAlgebra cover divisibility rules. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoPlaceLikeHome Posted June 22, 2016 Author Share Posted June 22, 2016 Calculators do prime factorization now? I'd encourage my kid to continue to do it themselves. It's fun! Well, I think its fun. He can do it since he does it all the time. It just looks time consuming to me. As to whether calculators can do this I am unsure. You can tell I remember very little of math! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiana Posted June 22, 2016 Share Posted June 22, 2016 He can do it since he does it all the time. It just looks time consuming to me. As to whether calculators can do this I am unsure. You can tell I remember very little of math! He will want to be able to quickly and easily prime factor numbers, but not enormous ones. He may be taking classes in the future where use of this function is not permitted, or use of a calculator, and not being able to do it will hurt. Furthermore, continual practice helps to review short division and the multiplication tables throughout upper-level classes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.