[Thorn]

I'm surprised no one commented on the fact that calculator usage is a fairly new thing. I forget which year they first allowed it, but it's less than 10 years ago. But, before 2000, there were 30 questoins on the AHSME with a 90 minute time limit, which did give you more time on the easier problems since most students couldn't make any progress on the last 5 - 10 questions.

So, if you want to see AMC questions written without the calculator allowed, grab any "Contest Problem Book" Volumes I through VI. (or are they up to VII ?)

On the AMC-10 this year, at least one problem was trivial with a TI-89.

[kstan013]

Well, all problems can be done without a calculator anyway. I think the main purpose of the calculator is to speed up ticky-tacky multiplying and adding. Otherwise, you can't use calcs on geometry problems really. If the qualifying score drops, great! But like Sly Si said, it will take away less serious people and low scores along with them to drag the qualifying score down considerably...Let's call it a wash.

[ehehheehee]

Maybe just a scientific calculator allowed would be nice. I admit calculators that can graph and program are pretty cheap. I just don't like it when I miss a problem that I solved because I couldn't add, subtract, multiply, or divide...

They shouldn't make us do long brainless calculations like multiplying and dividing loads of 4 digit numbers of simplifying lots of ugly radicals. Somewhere, I am going to mess up. Shouldn't they extend the time a little too, then?

[Kent Merryfield]

To clarify the history for Thorn's sake: the first year the AMC allowed calculators was 1994. The test writers also badly miscalculated the difficulty of the 1994 AHSME, creating the easiest test ever. I'm looking at a 1999 results book. There's a listing of everyone who ever got a perfect score on the AHMSE. For the 40+ years 1950-1993, there are only a little over 40 names, about one per year on average. (The list includes 1988, David Patrick, Batavia NY.) But then there were about 100 perfect scores on the 1994 AHSME.

So, of course, it became conventional wisdom among teachers that calculators had made the AHSME much, much easier. Of course, that wasn't it at all - it was just that they mis-calibrated the difficulty of the 1994 exam. In 1997 there were no perfect papers at all. In 1999, there were four, including Gabriel Carroll and Sasha Schwartz. (Odd footnote: Oakland Technical HS did not take the AHSME on the official date, so Gabe Carroll's 150 is "unofficial" and the officially recognized high score for Region IX is jmerry's 145.)

The change from the 30-question, 90-minute AHSME to the 25-question, 75-minute AMC-12 took place in 2000. Since then, there have usually been a dozen or so perfect papers a year. I think that relative increase in perfect papers comes mostly from the reductiion from 30 to 25 questions - it's a little easier to avoid screwing up with fewer questions.

As for banning TI-89's and similarly capable calculators? The problem is that there's no practical way to do that. TI-92's look different than other calculators; they could be (and usually were) banned. TI-89's don't look all that different; there's no way you can ask 20,000 proctors to check 300,000 calculators and know what they're looking for. Any attempt to say "this calculator is OK, that one isn't" would result in spotty and uneven enforcement. I understand Sly Si's point, and I'd be willing to bet that someone made that very argument in AMC committee meetings. They must have felt that the need to get away from the programmable calculators was a stronger argument on the other side.

I personally would just as soon do this without calculators, but I grew up before there were calculators, so I don't count. jmerry wouldn't have cared if you'd have taken his calculator away; jmerry's younger sister won't care. But I do worry, along with Sly Si, about the image and marketing, about the risk of scaring students away.

[coloradoarml]

I like the move away from calculators but am concerned about the increased emphasis on speed. There are students who do well on essay-type math contests and the AIME but have trouble finishing all 25 problems on the AMC12. Without calculators there will be even more time pressure. If one of the goals of the AMC is to select the best students for the USAMO, then I would suggest increasing the time limit from 75 minutes to 90.

[now a ranger]

maybe it should be like the SAT


only scientific calculators without special functions and normal calculators only


no programmed calculators such as TI 89 etc.

[Kent Merryfield]

now a ranger wrote:

only scientific calculators without special functions and normal calculators only

no programmed calculators such as TI 89 etc.

As I said, it would be asking the impossible to ask 20,000 or so proctors to accurately enforce such a rule.

[mrosett]

The AMC 12a #17 and 18 became much much easier if you were willing to just grind them with a calculator. I missed both of them (or rather left them blank) b/c I tried to do them both entirely by hand, and wasted 25 minutes not getting an answer on either. If I had plugged them into my calculator, I would've nailed them both, and had 20 minutes more to work on the rest of the test. I'm confident that I could've solved 4 more than I did (2 that I missed, and 2 that I left blank). So my score would've gone up as much as 30 points if I were more calculator savvy....
Does anyone actually like that idea? Because I don't. I suppose that this is just me being sour grapes, because I was on the wrong side of the split, but the reality is that next year I was going to make sure that a) I knew how to efficiently make my calculator solve systems of equations and b) I would be willing to plug and chug much more quickly. And that seemed ridiculous. I've spent most of my time this year preparing for AIME and USAMO. The idea of taking time to do a "How to use a calculator on the AMC" session with myself, which would be irrelevant on the other tests, just didn't seem right. So I'm pretty happy about this.
And I think that "MathCounts" fears are unfounded. The thing is, MathCounts was ENTIRELY about speed, except for maybe the very hardest National level problems. I saw maybe a handful of MathCounts problems that I was incapable of solving at the time. The reason that I would miss points was always a) I ran out of time or b) I made mistakes under time pressure. Although that happened a little with the AMC for me this year, that was mostly through poor decision making on my part. With MC, I couldn't finish the whole test, even if I didn't get hung up on a problem. With the AMC, the only advantage to having speed is you get marginally more time on the last 5-7 questions. But when it comes down to it, if you aren't good enough to solve those problems, having all the time in the world won't help you, with the possible exception of it that give you time to write programs on a couple of them....
This is a good move.

[usaha]

What was 17, was that the one with the n values and you want to find the lowest value of m+n?

[rem]

A scientific calculator can kill many problems.

I think it's a good move because on the hard competitions you cannot use a calculator.

[nameless4365]

I thought that the progression of contests balanced calculators and no calcuators well. To get to the USAMO you had to do well on two competitions: the AMC where you and your opponants could use calculators, and the AIME where everyone could not use calculators. I don't like this new change that bans calculators on the AMC. It seems to me that calculators are an important tool in real life, and doing long calculations by hand is not much of a skill. The previous balance between where you could use a calculator on the AMC was better.

[now a ranger]

Kent Merryfield wrote:

To clarify the history for Thorn's sake: the first year the AMC allowed calculators was 1994. The test writers also badly miscalculated the difficulty of the 1994 AHSME, creating the easiest test ever. I'm looking at a 1999 results book. There's a listing of everyone who ever got a perfect score on the AHMSE. For the 40+ years 1950-1993, there are only a little over 40 names, about one per year on average. (The list includes 1988, David Patrick, Batavia NY.) But then there were about 100 perfect scores on the 1994 AHSME.

So, of course, it became conventional wisdom among teachers that calculators had made the AHSME much, much easier. Of course, that wasn't it at all - it was just that they mis-calibrated the difficulty of the 1994 exam. In 1997 there were no perfect papers at all. In 1999, there were four, including Gabriel Carroll and Sasha Schwartz. (Odd footnote: Oakland Technical HS did not take the AHSME on the official date, so Gabe Carroll's 150 is "unofficial" and the officially recognized high score for Region IX is jmerry's 145.)

The change from the 30-question, 90-minute AHSME to the 25-question, 75-minute AMC-12 took place in 2000. Since then, there have usually been a dozen or so perfect papers a year. I think that relative increase in perfect papers comes mostly from the reductiion from 30 to 25 questions - it's a little easier to avoid screwing up with fewer questions.

As for banning TI-89's and similarly capable calculators? The problem is that there's no practical way to do that. TI-92's look different than other calculators; they could be (and usually were) banned. TI-89's don't look all that different; there's no way you can ask 20,000 proctors to check 300,000 calculators and know what they're looking for. Any attempt to say "this calculator is OK, that one isn't" would result in spotty and uneven enforcement. I understand Sly Si's point, and I'd be willing to bet that someone made that very argument in AMC committee meetings. They must have felt that the need to get away from the programmable calculators was a stronger argument on the other side.

I personally would just as soon do this without calculators, but I grew up before there were calculators, so I don't count. jmerry wouldn't have cared if you'd have taken his calculator away; jmerry's younger sister won't care. But I do worry, along with Sly Si, about the image and marketing, about the risk of scaring students away.

how about only simple calculators with no special functions only? It's not that hard to tell if one is a tiny simple one or not.


OR calculators can be provided; normal, no special kind.


It would be helpful for regular calculation or checking answers.

[Aegor]

now a ranger wrote:

OR calculators can be provided; normal, no special kind.

It would be helpful for regular calculation or checking answers.

What is normal? What is a special kind? If you mean non-graphing calculators, I don't see the point. As long as the AMC tests don't have problems which require astronomical multiplications, even a scientific calculator doesn't do much. You can know whether or not your answer is correct if it matches up with the answer choices. The "trap answers" are targeting methods more than calculations. I never use my calculator on the AMC except to do complicated problems with plugging in (like number 17 on the B test).

[now a ranger]

I meant only calculators like this


http://www.msu.edu/course/psy/295/foswa ... ulator.bmp


on this link

[kimyejin2000]

i only use calculater just to multiply divide add or delete
just to save some time

also ive never used calcs before highschool
thats how my parents were
so i have no problem but

if amc wont allow calcs. anymore they should
1) add more time
2)drop the cutoff

[PenguinIntegral]

The only thing I don't like about it is that I just KNOW it's going to screw everyone over next year. I really hope the CAMC balances the difficulty right, because there are a variety of ways this could go wrong. The only currently problem with calculators was that it gave the people who brought in their Titanium TIs an unfair advantage. These people were pruned out when the AIME came around, and everything was good.

I personally do not like the change, but I think it's for the better. I had probably the worse AMC score of any regular AoPS poster because I never did the intense MC prep everyone else did and because of it I still make boatloads of mistakes. Last summer when I still practiced regularly I was getting sometimes qualifying AIME scores while other posters my age were still talking about national mathcounts, and so I felt at that time that the way I learned math was correct. But now I'm not so sure; I really cannot conceive doing all the AMC questions fast enough to get a perfect because of all the errors I make, though I *know* the number of problems I honestly couldn't solve I could count on one hand. Even with a calculator, I barely got done with over 20 questions, and missed almost a quarter of them (how I pray they lower the floor for the 12B just enough...)

So maybe it'll kick me into shape and I'll actually practice with my 3rd grade little brother on timed 2 digit multiplication tests. But what I'm really afraid of happening is the AMC throwing down more problems that involve menial computation to weed out people like me...

[rem]

Oh, so you could use graphing calculators on AMC? OMG I never knew that.

[tjhance]

Graphing calculators can make a lot of the problems really cheap. But I don't see what is wrong with the smaller calculators that could only do basic operations. I wouldn't mind a ban of the graphic calculators, but I'm going to have difficulties without any calculator of any sort.

Are slide rules allowed?

[AMCDirector]

The reason that the Committee on the American Mathematics Competitions decided to not allow calculators on the AMC 8, AMC 10, AMC 12 in 2007-2008 and beyond was twofold:
(1) Allowing calculators essentially trivialized some interesting and valuable mathematical questions that could be asked if calculators were not allowed. These questions often involved logarithms and trigonometric functions, as well as the graphs of functions. COmpare the number of questions about logarithms and trig from pre-1994 to more recent tests. You will see a noticeable difference, I think.
(2) Knowing that some students were using TI-89s and some were not forced the question writers to create problems with powers or values that would swanmp the display of the calculator if a student attempted to use a calculator directly, say polynomials to the 2007th power, or problems that involve 2007! and so forth. It will now be possible to create good problems that involve the same principles but with powers or coefficients that are much more reasonable to use.

Later this spring the committee will be publishing an article in some journal devoted to math teachers and professionals that lays out the argument in much greater detail. It is not finished yet and publishing it before the 2007 contests created the possibility for confusion. That is why you are only hearing about this decision now. We will be publicizing the decision throughout the coming year.

The committee is acutely aware of the difficulties in calculations with large numbers and the average time taken per problem. Believe me, each problem is examined in far greater detail than you can imagine for that and dozens of other constraints.

Incidentally, the committe discussed allowing, say, only four-function calculators, to be used. However, as Kent Merryfield correctly observed the difficulty in getting all proctors to distinguish between a four-function calculator and a TI-89, or even a TI Voyager is impossible. (You have to realize how lucky many of you are to have knowledgable mentors. In some places the school librarian or a counselor gives the contest. We can't expect them to make what for them are fine distinctions.)
The best solution was to allow nothing electronic.

The result will be the same high quality contests and will allow the test creators greater range for creating interesting mathematical questions.

Steve Dunbar
Director, American Mathematics Competitions

[Treething]

randomdragoon wrote:

I won't really care that much, other than question 1 will be a little more annoying. I don't rely on the calculator that much, but I know some people who really bust out programs during the competition who will now have to learn the elegant way to do things.

:<