Calculator Question

I'm sure that depends on the school. My school provides non-programmable scientific calculators for tests.

 

You probably won't need one for the types of calculations you will need to do unless you are asked to figure out the trajectory of a tablet as it falls from the counter to the floor. In all liklihood, the school probably won't want you to have a calculator that would potentially allow you to store answers in.

 

Now these are the questions that make me feel really old!

My husband bought me a calculator for Christmas my last year of pharmacy school thinking it would be a good thing for the state board exam. Nice guy!

But....they wouldn't let calculators into the board exam - these were in the days before programmable ones.

And before WVU or Caverject of Zpak chimes in - NO - I did not use an abacus.....only a slide rule .

Change is a good thing!!!

 

The professor for each class tells you whether or not you can bring a calculator to the exam. None of them allowed programmable calculators. At our campus, they walked around and did a calculator check. They took away anything that wasn't a basic scientific calculator. They also made you hit the memory key and clear out anything you might have stored.

You'll need a calculator with log and natural log functions.

 

I can't imagine why you would need a programmable one, although most of my classmates seem to have one (I guess from taking calculus). I had one teacher in particular who specifically stated no programmable calculators. Some of the other ones didn't specify, but then we had somebody who committed an honor code violation with a programmable one during a test.

 

My school (MCPHS-Worcester) has an "official calculator." It is the only one we are allowed to use on exams. It is my opinion that they chose it because it is very ugly and unique-looking, so they can easily spot who is using a contraband calculator. It's very basic, about $10 at Staples. You can't store anything in it. I'm a real math nerd, and even I don't need anything fancier that it for pharmacy school. http://www.staples.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StaplesProductDisplay?prodCatType=1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10051&langId=-1&productId=134670&cmArea=SC3:CG9P900:CL90002

So...I would buy something cheap now, and then just wait for your school to start.

 

haha, I got through calculus with a basic TI-30x I think. I just got to the point where I got tired of trying to figure out who allowed graphic calculator use and who did not. So I kinda became a master at doing everything you can do on a calculator, by hand. Tedious, but worth it. I don't know how this helps, but not having a calculator is not the end of the world. Once I got on the higher level end of thinking I found I need a calculator for things like -3.1-1.5 or 11/3 lol.. the basic stuff that was pushed into the back, or I was just to lazy to use up brain power to do. Good luck!!!

 

There's no required or banned calculators at ISU, but a few people have graphing calculators. As someone else mentioned, the most important things are going to be the logarithmic functions on whatever calculator you have.

Myself, I have a TI-30XIIS. It's purple, which makes it pretty unique. I love it. I got it for ~$10 at Walmart a few years ago. There's no reason to spend much more money than that on a calculator for school. There are plenty of other things to spend $$ on, like textbooks!

 

We are not allowed to use programable calculators either, the school has 2 approved calculators that we can use on exams, either the TI-30X IIS or TI-30Xa. My guess is most school wont allow programable calculators because of the possibility of cheating. I loved my TI-83 when in pre-pharm just because I was familiar with where every function was but not I live by my TI-30Xa!!

 

WVU runs mostly on martial law. Yeah, sure, you can use a scientific calculator. I know several students that have gotten away with programming entire sets of notes into their calculators, use it during the test, brag about it to numerous people, and have nothing happen to them. One time, and I am not making this up, a couple of students were caught in front of the Dean of the School of Pharmacy, the Dean of Medicine, and a biochemistry teacher in the act of cheating on a biochem test and nothing happened to them because they got lawyers involved. Then I forget to email a professor about remediating an exam and they ****ing crucify me over it; delaying my graduation 6 months. This taking into effect that the syllabus stated that it was the teacher's responsibility to make arrangements for test remediation. It's all, at best, inconsistent, martial law.

But, hey, that's just my school....

 

Wow, that's pretty ridiculous...How's Dean Chase doing, we really miss her at Butler, have you had a chance to get to know her at all?