5 ms·

And then you have to buy a graphing calculator anyway because no high school teacher / university professor will let you take tests with it.

by Phlarp 12y ago

freehunter 12y ago
Hell, I'm surprised some of my teachers let me use a graphing calculator one tests that didn't require them. They're already powerful enough to easily cheat with.
derekp7 12y ago
Because of cheating? How can you use the Raspberry Pi (in a calculator shell) to cheat, in such a way that you can't use a ti-89 to cheat? Most cheating will be by either storing crib notes on the device (which won't do you any good in math if you don't understand the concepts), or by running a program to solve a problem for you, both of which the ti-89 is more than capable of doing -- that is its whole purpose, is to run math programs. The ideal situation would be where the RPi foundation uses its existing clout to get a PiCalc accepted as a standard calculator in school.
- s73v3r 12y ago
  Wifi?
- icebraining 12y ago
  During my high school exams, every calculator would get reset by a teacher/supervisor beforehand. Harder to do with such a device.
  - paulfurtado 12y ago
    This was still trivial to get around on calculators: on a TI 83/84 you could simply archive any programs you wanted to survive a memory wipe, then un-archive them after the wipe. This trick was widely employed by students in my high school who stored notes/equations by using programs as generic text files.
- Crito 12y ago
  Standardized test calculator rules in this country are not governed by reason. For instance, a TI-89 is allowed on the SATs, but a TI-92 is not. Basically the same calculator, except the TI-92 has a qwerty keyboard. How would a tiny little qwerty keyboard actually give you an advantage on a test like the SAT? Who the hell knows. Remember 10 or so years ago when teenagers were all typing on telephone keypads? On the other hand, the advantage of a TI-89 (with a CAS) over a TI-83+ (without one) is fairly extreme. (Also, anyone who bothers to google it can trivially get around the reset key combos for at least 83+ line: http://brandonw.net/calculators/fake/ http://brandonw.net/calculators/fake/ Somebody who takes the time to program their calculator for cheating on a test can do this)
  - baddox 12y ago
    I don't know if it's fair to say that the rules aren't governed by reason. You're thinking only of the capabilities of the calculator, but there are other potential reasons that are valid. It could be a simple matter of wanting to make it easy for testing staff to identify acceptable calculators by making the list of acceptable calculators very small.
  - mdturnerphys 12y ago
    The TI-92 with its keyboard was banned not because it would help the test taker, but because of a worry that the full keyboard would enable copying the test to send to someone in a later timezone.
    - Crito 12y ago
      I am skeptical that it would be of any help, particularly since the calculator is only allowed to be out during the math sections, not during the language/written sections. With the 89's input history, you could effectively record the mathematics section merely by running it all through your calculator and then extracting the history after the fact.
- yeukhon 12y ago
  There are two camps on why teachers might disallow calculator: 1) fear of cheating 2) because the teachers want you to do the calculation When I took my Calc and my engineering courses, my teachers would not allow calculators. They would make sure the numbers are nice, not some crazy number or pi to calculate with. Volts, current, all those numbers are so nice we can do on the paper. I like that because it means the teacher actually put effort to ensure the numbers are not just random, they mean something to the teacher who created the exam (even though they might just change the number next semester).

And then you have to buy a graphing calculator anyway because no high school teacher / university professor will let you take tests with it.

by Phlarp 12y ago

And then you have to buy a graphing calculator anyway because no high school teacher / university professor will let you take tests with it.

freehunter 12y ago

Hell, I'm surprised some of my teachers let me use a graphing calculator one tests that didn't require them. They're already powerful enough to easily cheat with.

derekp7 12y ago

Because of cheating? How can you use the Raspberry Pi (in a calculator shell) to cheat, in such a way that you can't use a ti-89 to cheat? Most cheating will be by either storing crib notes on the device (which won't do you any good in math if you don't understand the concepts), or by running a program to solve a problem for you, both of which the ti-89 is more than capable of doing -- that is its whole purpose, is to run math programs. The ideal situation would be where the RPi foundation uses its existing clout to get a PiCalc accepted as a standard calculator in school.

s73v3r 12y ago
Wifi?
icebraining 12y ago
During my high school exams, every calculator would get reset by a teacher/supervisor beforehand. Harder to do with such a device.
- paulfurtado 12y ago
  This was still trivial to get around on calculators: on a TI 83/84 you could simply archive any programs you wanted to survive a memory wipe, then un-archive them after the wipe. This trick was widely employed by students in my high school who stored notes/equations by using programs as generic text files.
Crito 12y ago
Standardized test calculator rules in this country are not governed by reason. For instance, a TI-89 is allowed on the SATs, but a TI-92 is not. Basically the same calculator, except the TI-92 has a qwerty keyboard. How would a tiny little qwerty keyboard actually give you an advantage on a test like the SAT? Who the hell knows. Remember 10 or so years ago when teenagers were all typing on telephone keypads? On the other hand, the advantage of a TI-89 (with a CAS) over a TI-83+ (without one) is fairly extreme. (Also, anyone who bothers to google it can trivially get around the reset key combos for at least 83+ line: http://brandonw.net/calculators/fake/ http://brandonw.net/calculators/fake/ Somebody who takes the time to program their calculator for cheating on a test can do this)
- baddox 12y ago
  I don't know if it's fair to say that the rules aren't governed by reason. You're thinking only of the capabilities of the calculator, but there are other potential reasons that are valid. It could be a simple matter of wanting to make it easy for testing staff to identify acceptable calculators by making the list of acceptable calculators very small.
- mdturnerphys 12y ago
  The TI-92 with its keyboard was banned not because it would help the test taker, but because of a worry that the full keyboard would enable copying the test to send to someone in a later timezone.
  - Crito 12y ago
    I am skeptical that it would be of any help, particularly since the calculator is only allowed to be out during the math sections, not during the language/written sections. With the 89's input history, you could effectively record the mathematics section merely by running it all through your calculator and then extracting the history after the fact.
yeukhon 12y ago
There are two camps on why teachers might disallow calculator: 1) fear of cheating 2) because the teachers want you to do the calculation When I took my Calc and my engineering courses, my teachers would not allow calculators. They would make sure the numbers are nice, not some crazy number or pi to calculate with. Volts, current, all those numbers are so nice we can do on the paper. I like that because it means the teacher actually put effort to ensure the numbers are not just random, they mean something to the teacher who created the exam (even though they might just change the number next semester).