Ausmumof3 Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 Just a quick question - how much calculator use would you expect using alcumus. Obviously most of the problems have a simple solution but if you end up with something like 6 to the 6th power do you expect kids to perform that calculation mentally/on paper or would you go for a calculator? On the one hand my dude could still use a bit of practice manually multiplying but on the other hand it seems pretty laborious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KSinNS Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 With AOPS, you typically can assume no need to use a calculator. So if you are wondering if they need a calculator, the kiddo may have missed the point of the question. Certainly in BA they want you to practice long division and multiplication so there will be some longer calculations. But nothing unreasonable or long. I'm not sure if they want to do multiplication/division practice in Prealgebra. My daughter ran into one recently where my husband asked me if she could use a calculator, but I think she had missed the quicker work-around to avoid a nasty long division question. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ausmumof3 Posted February 21, 2019 Author Share Posted February 21, 2019 1 hour ago, KSinNS said: With AOPS, you typically can assume no need to use a calculator. So if you are wondering if they need a calculator, the kiddo may have missed the point of the question. Certainly in BA they want you to practice long division and multiplication so there will be some longer calculations. But nothing unreasonable or long. I'm not sure if they want to do multiplication/division practice in Prealgebra. My daughter ran into one recently where my husband asked me if she could use a calculator, but I think she had missed the quicker work-around to avoid a nasty long division question. You are correct. I was guiding and miscopied 6 to the power of 12 as 6 to the power of 15 and hence the nasty big calculation! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAttachedMama Posted February 22, 2019 Share Posted February 22, 2019 In my experience, if you find yourself needing a calculator, you PROBABLY missed a trick to make things much simpler along the way. That is the whole "art" part of the art problem-solving---learning to see the tricks which make problem-solving easier. 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.