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A comment on Denmark's education minister will let high schools check students computers. Parent comment

Re:Denmark's education minister will let high schools check ... by jacobolus on Friday October 20, 2017 @05:07AM (#15514450)
> If you're doing any serious math you need a CAS.

You must be joking. There is no math course I’ve ever heard of from 1st grade through graduate school which should “need a CAS” (or even an electronic calculator of any kind) on exams to demonstrate understanding of the content of the course or fluency with its proofs or problem solving tools.

In most cases designing exams around CAS use (or calculator use in general) makes them far worse at testing student understanding or problem solving skill.

The reason calculators are used in mathematics exams is because calculator vendors (especially Texas Instruments) were very effective at making back-room deals with textbook publishers and standardized test sponsors (and sometimes public officials), and ran decades of great subversive marketing aimed at anxious parents. Not because of any particular pedagogical value of the calculators.

Tools like Mathematica or Maple can be very helpful for mathematical research or mathematical modeling in other technical fields, and are worth learning for undergraduates, but should by no means be used on exams.

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Re:Denmark's education minister will let high schools check ... by soegaard on Friday October 20, 2017 @09:24AM (#15515527)
High School students in Denmark are taught How to use a CAS (Nspire, GeoGebra’s algebra window, Maple or similar). To test that they know a Cas, some exercises contain equations, deriviates or integrals that only a cas can solve (or at least are harder than a high school student is expected to handle by hand).
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Re:Denmark's education minister will let high schools check ... by jacobolus on Friday October 20, 2017 @06:13PM (#15519461)
Learning about how to use such tools seems fine, but testing that in exams (and then worrying about whether the students are cheating, etc. etc.) seems completely misguided computer fetishization to me. YMMV.

If you want to get students to demonstrate their use of a CAS, give some real-world modeling problems, and then give them a few days to make a mathematical model (using the CAS, or whatever other tools they prefer) and write up a mini paper about it.

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