Online Tutoring

There has been a lot of debate over using calculator in the SAT test. And the good news is that you should definitely make use of the calculator. After all, you take the SAT to get good scores and get admitted in your favorite college, and to show off your mental calculation skills.

The SAT test, as well all know, tests our reasoning skills. The Math section contains questions of different difficulty levels. While you might feel the need to use a calculator for simple questions, problems that involve lengthy calculations might eat up your time if you do not use a calculator.

When to use the calculator? If you are good at math, and you can do basic arithmetic in your head, you are lucky. However, if math problems do trouble you, using a calculator would be a good decision.  Again, the same problem can attract use of calculator in different ways.

To give an example, let us see how a math problem can be solved in different ways using a calculator, and without it too.

If 16 × 25 × 36 = (4a) ² Find a

Options: (A) 6     (B) 15     (C) 30     (D) 36     (E) 60

Approach 1: Too much use of calculator

Calculate 16 × 25 × 36 = 14400

See that (4a) ² = 16a²

So, 16a² = 14400

Use the calculator to divide 14400 with 16 to get a² = 900

Again use the calculator to find the Square root of 900. Therefore, a = 30

Approach 2: Little use of calculator

16 × 25 × 36 = 16a²

The 16 on LHS can be cancelled with the 16 on the RHS

Multiply 25 x 36 using a calculator to get 900

So we get 900 = a²

Take the square root of 900 using the calculator. So the answer is a = 30

Smart Approach: No Calculator

Cancel the 16 on both side of the equation.

Also note that 25 x 36 = a² can be written as 5² x 6² = a²

Hence a = 30

Tags: math, SAT, tutoring essentials

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 5:11 am and is filed under Online Tutoting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.