An Inexpensive ACT Calculator & a Potpourri of Links

An Inexpensive ACT Calculator & a Potpourri of Links

For the revision to our ACT book, Preparing for the ACT: Mathematics and Science Reasoning, we purchased a cheap scientific calculator from Casio, the fx-115 ES, and I was amazed at the power of this pocket calculator. The calculator sells for about $20 (or less depending o! n where you purchase it), and can:

• work with percents, fractions, and mixed numbers


• simplify radical expressions


• express answers in terms of pi


• do operations with complex numbers


• find permutations and combinations


• perform one-variable statistics (including frequency tables)


• solve one variable equations


• do operations with matrices


• calculate integrals


• do all the usual things that a scientific calculator can do (like radicals, powers, trig functions, etc.)

To top it off, the darn thing runs on solar power! The geek in me can’t help but say, “Wow!” It’s proof that technology can be cheap and powerful (I’m talking to you, Apple.) I called the ACT twice just to confirm that this calculat! or is allowed on the test.

! ACT Tip: If you are planning on taking the ACT test and can’t afford (or don’t want to bother with) a graphing calculator, you can’t go wrong with the fx-115 ES. You are not going to find a TI model with similar capabilities for the same price.

Note/Warning: The ACT is a timed test – you have an average of 1 minute per question. This means two things: (1) Buying a calculator that you are not accustomed to using right before the test is a big mistake. (2) While using an advanced calculator can be helpful in the classroom, you probably won’t have time to use the advanced features on the ACT test. The Casio fx-115 ES’s features that will be useful on the ACT are fractions, mixed numbers, simplifying radical expressions, expressing answers in terms of pi, and operations with complex numb! ers.

To conclude today’s post, here is the promised potpourri of links:

• Engineers beat math PH.D’s in math contest. The contest: The Netflix Prize. Make Netflix’s movie recommendation system more accurate by 10%. The math: statistics.


• We’re all probably going to speak Chinese one day. A group of computer science students from China created one of the most awesome pieces of software I’ve seen in a long time: PhotoSketch (see the video below). It takes a hand-drawn sketch tagged with the name of the object and turns it into a real-world photo. It works in one of those “Why didn’t I think of that?” ways – the software does a web search based on the tags ! and chooses pictures that match the sketch. The best matches a! re then combined together and the user chooses the best looking image. The results are pretty amazing – check out the video below.


• The Making of a Mathlete. PBS is going to air a documentary about the International Math Olympiad. Need I say more? No, really, it actually looks pretty exciting.
  
  

PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from tao chen on Vimeo.

How to simplify radicals with fractions