No calculators in exam.

Artful_Badger

Talking to a few people today doing computing in college and they have an exam coming up and were told they wouldnt be allowed to use a calculator. From what I gather it will be stuff involving standard addition, division, multiplication etc.

Any course I've done it was a given that you use a calculator and you got marked on the method rather than just the answer. So you dont waste time doing stuff the long way and get to the root of the problem.

Whats the point of making people do manual computation in a tech course ?

Driveby Dogboy

the only way they might raise the points required, is reduce the number of places available,

wretcheddomain

Artful_Badger wrote: »

So you dont waste time doing stuff the long way and get to the root of the problem.

You mean square root, right?

diograis

gives them something to do i suppose? I hear the CIT one has this, never got it either. Doss

Would they be allowed to take in log tables.

wretcheddomain

mariaalice wrote: »

Would they be allowed to take in log tables.

They told me I wasn't allowed to bring in logs and that I had to leave them in the toilet before the exam.

Riddle101

Lol, if they ever told my old class that calculators weren't allowed in the exam, I think a lot of bricks would be sh*t.

Artful_Badger

mariaalice wrote: »

Would they be allowed to take in log tables.

Doubt they would be needed, seems like just basic maths.

BlurstMonkey

I think it's more than fair to expect students to be able to do basic math without a calculator, especially basic math. If you can't do that much on your own you shouldn't be allowed a calculator. You'd want to be sent back to national school.

An Coilean

Artful_Badger wrote: »

Talking to a few people today doing computing in college and they have an exam coming up and were told they wouldnt be allowed to use a calculator. From what I gather it will be stuff involving standard addition, division, multiplication etc.

Any course I've done it was a given that you use a calculator and you got marked on the method rather than just the answer. So you dont waste time doing stuff the long way and get to the root of the problem.

Whats the point of making people do manual computation in a tech course ?

You could perhaps argue that doing the calculations yourself would require the student to have a greater understanding of the mechanics of the calculations being done, but really I would find it quite odd that this would actually be done.
When I was in collage we were generally given the formulas and allowed calculaters, why do you need to be able to memorise a formula when in reality there is never going to be a reason that you can't just open the book and look it up if you need it, being able to use it porperly is the important thing, the same applies to calculations in general I would say.

Artful_Badger

BlurstMonkey wrote: »

I think it's more than fair to expect students to be able to do basic math without a calculator, especially basic math. If you can't do that much on your own you shouldn't be allowed a calculator. You'd want to be sent back to national school.

Its not that anyone cant do it but its time consuming and leaves open a lot of room for error when its unnecessary. Long multiplication and division is basic maths and perfectly doable but in an exam situation it makes it that bit harder to be error free, find errors and check answers without a calculator.

Which seems kinda pointless for testing someones knowledge of what has been taught which wasnt basic maths. You wouldnt expect people to write a geography exam in Irish even though they have been attending mandatory classes from primary to secondary.

UCDVet

I'm a bit torn on the issue.

I used a fancy calculator in school and, because of it, I never learned maths. I just figured out how to get my calculator to do it, scored well enough on the test, passed.

On the other hand, I learned a lot about my calculator and writing software. Then I went into a career writing software.

Sometimes, I wish I'd learned more and I think paper and pencil would have helped....but maybe I wouldn't have learned to program.

Quite the dilemma.

The Backwards Man

There's three things should never be allowed in exam halls;

• 1.Calculators
• 2.Abacuses

BlurstMonkey

Artful_Badger wrote: »

Its not that anyone cant do it but its time consuming and leaves open a lot of room for error when its unnecessary. Long multiplication and division is basic maths and perfectly doable but in an exam situation it makes it that bit harder to be error free, find errors and check answers without a calculator.

Which seems kinda pointless for testing someones knowledge of what has been taught which wasnt basic maths. You wouldnt expect people to write a geography exam in Irish even though they have been attending mandatory classes from primary to secondary.

I don't think the analogy you're using is a good one, but not to get too sidetracked because this is really simple. If you're doing basic math and you're getting errors then you've got a problem doing basic math. It's not something that should ever be over looked or undervalued.

Artful_Badger

BlurstMonkey wrote: »

I don't think the analogy you're using is a good one, but not to get too sidetracked because this is really simple. If you're doing basic math and you're getting errors then you've got a problem doing basic math. It's not something that should ever be over looked or undervalued.

You dont have to have a problem doing it, you can just make a mistake. People make mistakes regularly even with the use of technology thats doing the computing for you.

My point was that those mistakes when they happen in manual computation are harder to find, answers harder to check and extremely time consuming to do so. Making it an unnecessary hindrance to assessing a students understanding of the subject material.

Regardless of what you think about it never being undervalued it is by and large unnecessary anyway. A lot of tech courses are open book and value finding an answer to whatever is thrown at you with the resources available to be much more valuable than knowing how to do something in 2 minutes that something can do for you in an instant. I'd imagine thats because thats what employers want from tech graduates. They want people educated on computer science not competency in long division.

Super-Rush

I've a maths exam tomorrow and we can bring our calculators but I doubt we'll need them.

Not allowed bring in our bags though.

BlurstMonkey

Artful_Badger wrote: »

You dont have to have a problem doing it, you can just make a mistake. People make mistakes regularly even with the use of technology thats doing the computing for you.

My point was that those mistakes when they happen in manual computation are harder to find, answers harder to check and extremely time consuming to do so. Making it an unnecessary hindrance to assessing a students understanding of the subject material.

Regardless of what you think about it never being undervalued it is by and large unnecessary anyway. A lot of tech courses are open book and value finding an answer to whatever is thrown at you with the resources available to be much more valuable than knowing how to do something in 2 minutes that something can do for you in an instant. I'd imagine thats because thats what employers want from tech graduates. They want people educated on computer science not competency in long division.

It's because degrees are being handed out to anybody and courses are being dumbed down, I don't see a lack of proficiency in the basics as anything but a symptom of that. Adaptability and self learning is one thing. Understanding without basic proficiency in mathematics in any tech or science or other math related field is a failing of educational institutions and to the detriment of society.

Artful_Badger

BlurstMonkey wrote: »

It's because degrees are being handed out to anybody and courses are being dumbed down, I don't see a lack of proficiency in the basics as anything but a symptom of that. Adaptability and self learning is one thing. Understanding without basic proficiency in mathematics in any tech or science or other math related field is a failing of educational institutions and to the detriment of society.

Whats because degrees are being handed out to anybody ?

Proficiency in the basics is not the concern of third level education. And nobody is saying anything about students understanding without basic proficiency.

For someone harping on about basic maths and people having trouble being sent back to primary school, you seem to lack proficiency in basic English and have missed the point of this entire conversation.

The argument is that they shouldnt have to prove that basic proficiency while doing so detracts from adequately teaching and assessing the material they should be focused on understanding. Its not a math class. There already is a maths class. The class in question is a computer science theory class. The entire point of taking this class is to be proficient in the theory being taught not basic maths.

TheBody

Super-Rush wrote: »

I've a maths exam tomorrow and we can bring our calculators but I doubt we'll need them.

Not allowed bring in our bags though.

Is that an exam to be a category mod?

evolving_doors

BlurstMonkey wrote: »

I think it's more than fair to expect students to be able to do basic math without a calculator, especially basic math. If you can't do that much on your own you shouldn't be allowed a calculator. You'd want to be sent back to national school.

Ahh sorry to say but calculators are a go in national schools now.

Amirani

BlurstMonkey wrote: »

It's because degrees are being handed out to anybody and courses are being dumbed down, I don't see a lack of proficiency in the basics as anything but a symptom of that. Adaptability and self learning is one thing. Understanding without basic proficiency in mathematics in any tech or science or other math related field is a failing of educational institutions and to the detriment of society.

There's no onus on third-level to teach basic maths. If you get a degree despite not being able for basic maths, it's probably more likely that the degree doesn't involve basic maths rather than it having been dumbed down.

my teapot is orange

I don't agree that allowing calculators is dumbing down. You free up more time in the exam to test more advanced concepts or even just a wider range of material, if students aren't wasting time manually going through school-level calculations that they can all do anyway if they are studying maths at third level.

TheBody

my teapot is orange wrote: »

I don't agree that allowing calculators is dumbing down. You free up more time in the exam to test more advanced concepts or even just a wider range of material, if students aren't wasting time manually going through school-level calculations that they can all do anyway if they are studying maths at third level.

That's the problem. A lot of people at third level can't do "school level calculations".

The use of calculators causes people to lose a "feel" for the problem they are doing. They blindly follow the numbers on the screen rather than ask themselves if the solution seems reasonable in the scheme of the problem they are attempting. Having said that calculators have their place. The problem is that people reach for the calculator for the simpliest of problem.

Pov06

I'm studying Computer Applications in DCU and we weren't allowed to use a calculator in a class test when we had to convert numbers to and from different number system like binary, hexadecimal and octal.

But we are not allowed to use the calculator because it's something you should be able to calculate in your head.

SHANAbert

I'm 26 and we did our junior certs without calculators. The positives are that it helps you to see a number and just know its not quite right. The amount of times you need to do quick math in industry without a calculator is huge. Can't whip out the phone in the middle of a meeting where you have been asked some simple math..

As Schwarzenegger would say, "STOP WHINING".

my teapot is orange

TheBody wrote: »

That's the problem. A lot of people at third level can't do "school level calculations".

The use of calculators causes people to lose a "feel" for the problem they are doing. They blindly follow the numbers on the screen rather than ask themselves if the solution seems reasonable in the scheme of the problem they are attempting. Having said that calculators have their place. The problem is that people reach for the calculator for the simpliest of problem.

I think the problem here is we all have different ideas of what a "maths exam" is. There are third level pure maths students, who I would expect to be able to do basic maths since they probably all have higher level leaving cert A's anyway. There are people doing mathematical calculations in the context of other subjects such as an accounting/finance exam, where a calculator is vital for 2000 X 1.06^34 for e.g. I don't know anything about computer science.

If people are failing to grasp basic maths, that is a problem with the school system for the school system to rectify. It would truly "dumb down" many third level maths exams if a huge amount of time had to be devoted to long-division/multiplication at the expense of testing concepts, though I have found that there are ways around this. They often keep the numbers really simple when they are not allowing calculators so that the calculation literally takes a second, but then again that's not testing basic computational ability anyway.

BlurstMonkey

Armelodie wrote: »

Ahh sorry to say but calculators are a go in national schools now.

That is very sad.

NiallSparky wrote: »

There's no onus on third-level to teach basic maths. If you get a degree despite not being able for basic maths, it's probably more likely that the degree doesn't involve basic maths rather than it having been dumbed down.

If someone uses a calculator through their degree then they can absolutely get through without rudimentary skills in maths, even if those skills should be a given. Even for people who don't know what they're doing at all there is a huge amount of leeway in how marks are given and I know people personally who simply flailed their way to degrees and masters. Truly incompetent people.

There is an onus on universities to be rigorous and have standards and if maths is core to a subject then there should be a standard of proficiency without the crutch of a calculator for the basics.

titan18

Depending on the calculator, you can program them. Considering a computing course, there should be one who can do it.

Super-Rush

TheBody wrote: »

Is that an exam to be a category mod?

I'm being made re sit the mod exam

Actually I had to show two people how to use their calculators this afternoon. I was embarrassed for them.

wnolan1992

I think the main thinking behind not allowing calculators is that modern calculators can be programmed to do complex formulae. I know plenty of our lecturers don't allow calculators for this reason. They want you to prove you know how to carry out a calculation, not just pinging numbers into a calculator and hitting equals.

Also, any exam I've done that requires maths, you generally lose 1 mark if you make a calculation error. As long as you work though the method with the figures you come up with you'll get most, if not all marks.

And finally, if they are doing a computing course then, frankly, they should be well capable of basic addition, multiplication and division.

Witcher

Isn't there a plan to make the JC course calculator free in a few years?

Artful_Badger

wnolan1992 wrote: »

I think the main thinking behind not allowing calculators is that modern calculators can be programmed to do complex formulae. I know plenty of our lecturers don't allow calculators for this reason. They want you to prove you know how to carry out a calculation, not just pinging numbers into a calculator and hitting equals.

Also, any exam I've done that requires maths, you generally lose 1 mark if you make a calculation error. As long as you work though the method with the figures you come up with you'll get most, if not all marks.

And finally, if they are doing a computing course then, frankly, they should be well capable of basic addition, multiplication and division.

Its not just pinging in numbers and getting the answer though, you even say yourself a wrong answer can still give you nearly all the marks. So the right answer on its own isnt worth much. To convert numbers from one base to another as the poster from DCU was doing without a calculator is repetitive even with a calculator as you have to show the method too and the values at each stage. Proving you know how to multiply or add numbers is a waste of everyone's time.

The calculation being done on a calculator is basic math on values you know and are showing what your doing with. A calculator simply aids you in carrying out the steps of the method the assessor is looking for which you have to show anyway. As you say you lose a mark for a mistake and its a hell of a lot more likely you'll make a mistake without a calculator. And makes it hard to recheck answers.

It seems to me a waste of everyone's time proving you know basic maths when the questions could more adequately reflect the material if you didnt have to work through every little thing by hand. The lecturer is seriously limiting himself on what he can expect a student to be able to do in an hour long exam without a calculator. How anyone thinks that will raise the standard of computer science education I dont know.

batistuta9

Artful_Badger wrote: »

Talking to a few people today doing computing in college and they have an exam coming up and were told they wouldnt be allowed to use a calculator. From what I gather it will be stuff involving standard addition, division, multiplication etc.

Any course I've done it was a given that you use a calculator and you got marked on the method rather than just the answer. So you dont waste time doing stuff the long way and get to the root of the problem.

Whats the point of making people do manual computation in a tech course ?

I would imagine it isn't basic calculations in decimal.

it's more likely in binary, hex, etc. so as they know the process involved to do the calculations in different number bases, convert into them from decimal or whatever, display a negative number, etc.

you don't learn to add, divide, etc. in decimal with a calculator at national school do you? you learn the process of it first

wait until next week, where you'll be informed of the uncontroversial, unanimous topic of them learning to program from a basic text editor or an IDE :pac:

shruikan2553

BlurstMonkey wrote: »

There is an onus on universities to be rigorous and have standards and if maths is core to a subject then there should be a standard of proficiency without the crutch of a calculator for the basics.

In my college the engineering courses have a method of making sure people have basic math skills. They require a C in higher level maths.

Any issues should be taken up with the secondary and primary schools.

srsly78

Contrary to popular belief calculators are pretty much unnecessary for maths or computer science type courses, unless you happen to be building one.

However for other science or engineering type courses a calculator is needed for multiplying numbers with lots of decimals.