this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

In the university physics classes I took, if the final answer was 47/69, then that was acceptable because the goal was to show you knew how to get there, and the actual value didn't really matter.

Also, when the final value does matter, each time you round a number (which you often do when it's a division you want a calculator for), you're adding error to the final answer. So avoiding using a calculator as much as possible will increase the accuracy of the final answer when there's many steps.

That said, they didn't disallow calculators and didn't want to see long division or multiplication steps.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I wasn't talking about university, and I guarantee you the OP who posted this meme wasn't, either. I think you know this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

My point was that even at university level where the maths are theoretically the hardest they've been up to that point, calculators aren't something that are heavily leaned on.