Uni allows students to use calculators

he was probably exaggerating, but having to row reduce any fucking matrix by hand is just dumb tedious busy work.

>give students a 100x100 matrix and ask them to find its inverse
>also give the students some extra information about the vector space spanned by the columns of matrix
>maybe some other info here and there
>All so that it is possible to construct the inverse matrix through inspection and study, without having to actually compute the entire thing
>make it the test on vector spaces and call it a day

Sounds like a good test to me.

I see right through your post. Underage b&

What info would aid?

I also do that lol.

could you post this question online, i think i may give it to my students as a test

that's fucking retarded

>uni allows students to use calculators
>they allow on AP exams
I hope these aren't both OP. If they are, you don't take AP exams in college buddy.

>what is engineering

>>why would uni allow calculators
>>every engineering course that isn't a pure math >>course

Circuits course my nigga.

seriously? they make you do something that trivial?

What are you on about? Engineering uses "trivial" arithmetic all the time. The difficult part is understanding what the fuck is going on to even set up your equations and matrices.

admitting the 19th century is over

Wrong. I've got 2 * 2 =4 down. 2 +2 = 4 on the other hand....

Told.

In almost every math course I've taken in University, tests are divided into a calculator and non-calculator section.

Tfw I had to rref matrices in intro to linear algebra

Why the fuck would any university demand a numerical answer to a exam question (warranting a calculator) as opposed to demanding an algebraic answer? My linear algebra prof made us use calculators during exam and it still baffles me.

>ffs
>sheeit
You should be glad, there's no way you can do complex equations quickly when you're this much of a brainlet.

A quality engineering program will teach students how to deal with non-square systems. Overdetermined systems, for example have no unique solution so you pick the best one according to specification by optimization. Other than the trivial case of euclidian norm minimization (least squares) these optimization problems must be done numerically.

These are known as design problems very popular in engineering courses.

>physics and pure maths here
no they don't, not at my school.
I mean, scrubs can use a one line Casio for getting exact values but usually I either answer symbolically or algebraically if not explicitly necessary to give an exact value

Not really. At least I dont think so.

In any of the circuits courses I've taken I have never been asked to work with more than 4 linear equations.

Only brainlets need to use math

I'll be honest I did rref by hand on the mod-term becasue I didnt

>familiarize myself with the technology

Figured it out by the final but ffs if I would have used the calculator I would have had a fucking perfect score in LA.

>final multiplication for an answer
>7 * 6
>42, I know this, I'll just write it down now
>hesitate
>but just to be sure...
>punch it in to calculator
>get 42
>feel retarded anyway

Don't lie to me you all do this.

I once reduced a 9x9 matrix to solve a problem on a statics midterm

>not using empathy to feel the answers to all your engineering problems
Kek. Fucking brainlets.

>gotta dilute by factor of 10
>Easiest dilutions of my life for standards
>put it into calculator anyway
>have a spread sheet of my regular dilutions saved

I don't give a fuck if engineering courses require calculators. The equations and constants are godawful.
I'm not opposed to using Mathematica, XPP, etc. for homework, but math classes that required calculators have consistently been the worst classes I've taken.

You still haven't motivated why you would use a calculator on exam (unless you manually run each step of some algorithm using calculator, which is a horrible idea to begin with).

they allow them on our uni because no one can actually use them, we only use it for adding and multiplication

>row reduce 10x10 matrices by hand
>tfw my LA lecturer always asks stuff like this on exams for only 1 or 2 marks

Fuck it, I'll bite
>physics studies teach students to use stuff they are actually going to use not to waste time instead of forcing them to calculate everything in head, slowing them down and making then more likely to make calculation errors
What the actual fuck are they doing?

Verification and validation is an important part of the problem solving process in engineering/statistics/science/applied math.

Hell even in pure math, stuff like analytic number theory of ergodic theory you often need to provide constructive proofs which include verification of constructed procedures by an explicit numerical verification by technology.

The new age of the dumbing down.

Daily reminder that "scientific" calculators have no significant digits mode.

>it's a simulation

I hate doing 3x3 matrices. If I was given a 10x10 I would walk out and take my failure. There is no time to do a 10x10 matrix in 80 minutes PLUS other questions on an exam.

because setting up the equations to solve the problem is the real test. Computing the specific result is not the point. Calculators are not important.

Lately I've had a mary-sue fantasy of being a math professor teaching babby-tier math. It goes like this: use graphing calculators all day long on homeworks, and we'll use CAS in classes/labs as well. But here's how this class is going to be, come exam time: you will be stripped of your cell phones and your google glasses and all the rest of it, and you will have only pens, paper, a sheet of information that I give you to use, and your brain. And I have the full support of the university in this teaching style (so the fantasy goes).

Increased-autism mode: you are welcome to bring abaci or slide rules to use during the exam, if you can teach yourself how to use them to good effect. But you shall not have access to electronic devices during exams. Discovery of usage of electronic devices during exams will result in instant failure of the class.

On this, a co-worker once told a story of attending flight school, a theory class. the teacher imposed something like what I've said, and in the co-worker's telling, one student stood his ground and refused to put away his calculator even after having been giving advance warning that they were Right Out of exams.

The teacher picked the calculator up and smashed it to pieces on the floor. "GUESS WHAT! YOU'RE AT 30,000 FEET AND YOU HAVE TO FIGURE OUT YOUR VECTOR TO LAND AND NOW NO CALCULATOR BLA-DE-BLA" so my co-worker's anecdote went. It's sort of sensible (you need to be able to rapidly figure on-your own), but also sort of not (you're not going to spend much time bending down on any arithmetic instrument when you're focused on flying the plane, IMO).

fuck off autist

>easier to learn than MATLAB
>non-programmable
>needed for subjects where numeral calculation is not the one tested
>portable

Do you also fantasize about how you would improve the holocaust?

It's sensible tho, what if your gps and radio is fugged and you need to get to the nearest airport to land?

Gotta manually do those vectors

You know numerical result your calculator spits can't be used as a proof of anything because of finite precision and error it introduces?

But its true. Most of the points I lost in linear algebra were from arithmetic errors when multiplying matrices, finding inverses or computing determinants by hand.

>also give the students some extra information about the vector space spanned by the columns of matrix

Lol, what? If you're to assume the matrix is inveritble, then the column space is R^100. That fully characterizes it.

Glad my professors weren't 2clever4U brainlets like you

Probably hoping to raise the nogs graduation rate by decreasing the difficulty.

OP has somewhat of a point. I've encountered many peers and professors a like who struggle with arithmetic simply because they are too dependent on the calculator. That being said, fucking around with matrices, trig values, and integral calculations are obvious uses that are great for a calculator. Sometimes doing things the old fashioned way really is far too inefficient.

Luckily when I was back in high school I used to tutor young children a lot and subsequently developed mad arithmetic skills. A lot of it does come down to various tricks that apply commutivity, distributivity, and associativity like 99 + 99 + 99 = 300 - 3 or (12)(15) = (10+2)(15) = 150 + 30.

I worked on a farm a couple summer seasons too and having to count up dozens of eggs and record a total is easy with that easy 12 multiplication trick. You'd be surprised how much arithmetic gets used in a lot of various manual labor, and being able to do it on the fly is useful as fuck.

Even when I do more complex problems I still try to do all my arithmetic in my head or by hand simply because I enjoy the challenge. Every now and then I'll do some row reduction or determinants by hand just for shits. Of course if time is an issue, I'll just use a calculator, but if not it's always fun to go back and review.

This is a good habit to have though. If you have the time to double check, do it.

At least you aren't like me and do 8 * 4 as 36 pretty fucking regularly. Fucking faggot brain.

>$100 in a calculator
>cracked/free uni matlab can do better without costs

kys

Mine would let us use anything not connected to the internet

Im at community still and we're not allowed to use graphing calculators at all on exams in math courses calc1 +. Seems weird unis apparently allow it

>finding the inverse of a 100x100 matrix without a calculator
Any professor who would do this to his students deserves to get his tires slashed.

I didn't realize you could do matlab without a >$100 computer

Electrical engineering student here, they don't allow us to use calculator. But they should in my opinion
Doing operations with matrices and complex numbers isn't hard but just a pain in the ass. It doesn't require thinking and just wastes time

And we always get a linear system of 4 equations with 4 unknowns to solve at one point during electronics/e.engineering. It takes me 10-20 minutes to solve that shit while my calculator can do it in seconds. Losing that much time on a test is unnecessary

>Technology
>A fucking underpowered handheld device that has no fucking purpose beyond trivial calculations
It's useless in exams and computer aided exercises should be in a programming language that has actual merit.

Shown is the $20 HP Prime app on android actually. The physical one is $120, last I checked. The app actually computes faster, noticeably on updating graphs.