Posted on 06/08/2005 11:34:09 AM PDT by JZelle
RICHMOND -- Texas Instruments is replacing 160,000 school calculators in Virginia after an observant sixth-grader discovered a function that would have given students an unfair advantage on standardized tests. The state's education department asked Texas Instruments two years ago to disable the function that converts decimals to fractions because students are required to know how to do that with paper and pencil on statewide tests. But in January, Dakota Brown, 12, a student at Carver Middle School in Chesterfield County, figured out that by pressing two other keys on his approved TI-30 Xa SE VA, he could change decimals into fractions anyway.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
A smarter kid would have kept his mouth shut.
(Honesty comment notwithstanding)
Not if he already knew how to due the conversions with paper and pencil.
Where I worked last, they had a schoolbooks/paper/backpack giveaway thing once every year. I discovered that some of the (Chineese-made) calculators had multiple square-root keys, misplaced function keys. Got a kick out of that...would the teachers notice when the numbers were wrong?
That's what I was thinking. Any kid who can figure out that (1) a key combination will perform a function and (2) the results would be accurate in not getting any kind of "unfair" advantage at all, unless we use the Left's definition of "unfair" as being any ability not possessed by the stupidest among us.
It reminds me of a story I heard from a co-worker who was a cop in Vancouver for a while. During their training, they had to take a fitness test that consisted of a timed run through Stanley Park. During the run, one group passed a truck that belonged to the park staff that had been left unlocked with the keys in the ignition. They took the truck, parked it near the finish line, had a beer, then poured water over themselves and ran to the line at roughly the same time as the rest of the class, doing their utmost to appear winded. After they returned to the classroom, the instructor announced:
"You all passed, including the SOBs who took the truck that we left for you. Your objective was to get to the other side of the park as quickly as possible and how you got there was your business."
City truck. City police. No problem. (Just guessing. ;)
Kinda hard to call it grand theft if the vehicle never left the property.
From the model number, it looks like a TI-30Xa modified to meet Virginia state testing rules. They probably just took the fraction label off the button instead of changing the electronics. If so, you would just have to look at a picture of an unmodified TI-30Xa to see which key was for fractions.
City employees, city property, city business - no theft there.
To be fair, commandeering a vehicle in an emergency is a legit use of police authority. You have a valid point that what these guys did was a crime, but the aim of the exercise was to teach the men that the objective is not to run around but to get to where you are needed.
Sort of like Popeye Doyle in "The French Connection?"
Sorry, never saw that film.
Yeah. This reminds me a bit of when I was in college, and took finite math, we had to learn matricies. To this day, I'm really not sure what they are good for, but I remember that in order to do functions longhand, it was tremendously time-consuming for us intro to finite math folks (maybe somemore more proficient could go a lot faster). Anyhow, I had a TI-81, I think it was, approved by the course, and I discovered it had a matrix function in which I could perform all the necessary functions. Our exam was slotted for two hours, I turned my test in in 10 minutes, and the professor looked dumbfounded. Asked me if I was sure I wanted to turn it in, I said yep, and left. I don't think he knew the calculator could perform those functions (because I doubt he would have let us use it on the exam), so I don't know what he thought about me--maybe that I was some sort of super genius or a cheater or what. I have no idea.
He would commandeer cars at gunpoint from their owners whenever he needed one to chase the bad guys.
Vancouver likes that kind of stuff, I gather.
...LOL...
I think I need to have my eyes checked. For some reason I'm seeing posts about the Vancouver police in the thread about calculators!
They also make good motion picture vehicles for Keanu Reeves.
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