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Originally Posted by DarkShotgun  Well, whoever you guys are, I wish I had your teachers. My teacher makes us memorize all of the formulas, which I see as pointless, because if we ever need to use the formulas in real-life, (which is unlikely) we could just look them up anyway. And believe me, I'll bet you that NOBODY in my class memorizes the formulas for longer than 2 weeks. Also, what is the point of no-calculator sections when calculators have already been invented? It's not like their going to disappear in 5 years, and force everybody to do math the old way again.
Most of all I'm just complaining because I hate my teacher. She gave me a 2 out of f*ing 5 on a homework assignment that took me 2 hours to finish because I did several of the problems wrong even though I still got the right answer. I can't even be blamed for copying answers from the back of my book because all it says is "answers may vary."
There are many over things I could complain about. |
It's not necessarily whether or not you can do it with or without a calculator, but to test if you really understand what you're learning or not. The thing about math is that...no matter how "far" you think you've gotten...there is a harder form of it out there. Trust me on that one.
Algebra/Pre-Calc/Trig needs to basically come to you on the spot by the time you reach Calculus. If you're sitting there trying to figure out a simple quadratic formula, you'll never finish the problem. Learning to do things using your own brain also shows that you are capable of retaining techniques that can be used later. Memorizing formulas may or may not be considered stupid, depending on what it is we're talking about.
To be honest...I don't even remember any formulas in Pre-Calc, so I'm not sure what you're being required to memorize, but if it were something like Physics, then going into a test without some type of formula sheet is simply insane.