'No calculators'

All Nines

Hm. I find that to be a little too roundabout. Plus, I generally go for speed when I'm doing mental math, so I wouldn't be thinking to do that; I would take a straighter path and rely on numbers that I've already crunched and that I remember.

Stormtroper

B-b-but, I found that faster and less roundabout.

All Nines

Whatever works for each person, I guess.

glennmagusharvey

Yeah, I'm not as good at remembering carried numbers and better at minimizing the parallel/stored manipulations.

Which is why I prefer to go for piecewise addition/subtraction, division by single digits, multiplication by simple numbers, and decimal manipulation.

Bee

In my AP Calc class, the test was split into two parts.  The first part you weren't allowed to use a calculator -- it was mostly concepts, methods, and quicker problems that telescope nicely.  Then that part was collected, and the second part was handed out and you were allowed (and basically needed) to use a calculator for things like finding approximate answers, iterative stuff like Newton's Method, or crunching some nastier integrals.

Calculators are very useful tools, sometimes outright necessary, and you need to know how to use them to their fullest extent.  However, the temptation is very strong to crutch yourself on them without learning exactly how and what the calculator is doing for you.

glennmagusharvey

They reversed them?

I thought they started with one calculator section and then gave a no-calculator section during which you could still look at the first section but you couldn't use a calcy.

Or maybe that was just the class exams...

Bee

We didn't do that.  Probably because the no-calculator bit was kind of a warmup anyway.