1.5 SAT Math - Calculators

Let's talk about your calculator. Do you use it a lot? I mean A Lot a lot. That's the one you should use on the SAT test, or get yourself familiar with your calculator now. You should know where all the buttons you need are without hunting. Take an afternoon to just play around with the features and make sure you know how to find the square root button, the ^ to make exponents, the parentheses, everything. If you're holding your mom's kitchen calculator in your hands right now, get a new one. You need to be able to use square root, cube root, squared, cubed, raising to a power, parentheses, and buttons on this test. You do NOT need a graphing calculator, but you are allowed to use one, and if that's what you use in school, it can help you on the test. Do keep in mind, however, that the test proctors are supposed to pull your batteries before the test to clear your memory so you can't cheat, so before test day, make sure a friend has any programs you'd like to keep, or write them down so you can re-enter them later.

You know what the second biggest mistake kids make on the test is? Calculator error. Punching in the wrong numbers, or the wrong operation. Forgetting parentheses. Putting the decimal in the wrong place. That's another reason you need to write down your work on paper - double-check that what you've entered in the calculator is what you wrote down. If you do have a graphing calculator, don't clear your screen a lot - keep what you've done in case you made a little mistake that's easy to catch and fix.

Lastly, regarding your calculator, most are set to 8 or ten digits. This means that the answer you get might be .06481259 but the answer choices are all only 3 or 4 digits long, things like .065 or .9124. Questions in which you are supposed to round will be phrased "If the numerical value is not one of the choices, select the choice that best approximates this value." If the question says that, it's okay to lop off the end of the answer your calculator gave you, or round to the last digit, but be careful! Your answer should very closely match what you got on your calculator. Don't round too high. So in the example above, .065 would be an acceptable answer, .1 would not. That being said, if the question does NOT give you the option of approximation, do NOT round or just say "close enough." There are no "close" answers on the SAT test, and you don't get partial credit. You'll either get an answer that's there, or not.