Student Discovers Caculator Flaw

A sixth-grader figure out that if you press to buttons on the caculator it will turn a decimal into a fraction.

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- Texas Instruments is replacing thousands of calculators issued to students in Virginia after a sixth-grader discovered that pressing a certain two keys converts decimals into fractions.

That would have given students an unfair advantage on Virginia's standardized tests, which require youngsters to know how to make such conversions with pencil and paper.

I think these kids are smart. I don't think they should have told someone. I know in my school, the students find tricks on the calculator all the time. Like how to do logs without base of 10. Even though I could do it without a caculator, it just made it easier.



[edit on 10-6-2005 by alias101]

[edit on 10-6-2005 by alias101]

[edit on 10-6-2005 by alias101]

Sorry... I forgot to put where you can find the article.
www.cnn.com...

yeah, nobody wouldve said anything in my school. im gunna start pushing buttons on my calculator until it does my spanish for me.

Originally posted by Schmidt1989
yeah, nobody wouldve said anything in my school. im gunna start pushing buttons on my calculator until it does my spanish for me.

LOL!

Yo hablo espanol....un poco!

That's pretty cool. I don't see why he would've told though.
I would've made them pay me to tell them what the exploit was.

Umm... what the heck? I have a texas instruments calculator and it has decimal-to-fraction (and vice versa) as a built in feature, and it's at least 4 years old, probably more. (TI-83) I type in a decimal number on my calculator, I click on the MATH button, then I select >Frac and poof! 0.178 = 89/500 3.392156863 = 865/255 I'm pretty sure this wasn't a 'secret function'. Now, granted, it may have been a different model, but I have seen about half a dozen TI models and they all had this function, so I hardly see how this surprises anyone who has used a TI.

They should just do what they did for a bunch of my math courses in university. Ban calculators in the exams. That way, you can't bring in calculators that can do calculus or solve equations or matrices or whatever for you. The best way to test if you know something is to take away all possible aids, then let you have a go at it.

I looked on www.ti.com and all of their scientific calculators list the fraction conversion as a feature.

Well last I checked students are given a simple calculator for their exams here in Florida. They cannot bring their own but must use the one issued by the school. Texas Instruments makes alot of different calcs not just the big scientific ones with graphs and charts and such. It appears the flaw was just pressing a particular set of keys for an extended period of time maybe.

Originally posted by Schmidt1989
yeah, nobody wouldve said anything in my school. im gunna start pushing buttons on my calculator until it does my spanish for me.

Lmao. You sound like I did when I was taking spanish for a member of the law enforcement community. And if it could do that I wouldn't have failed it. For the record, if something like that does happen, send me a U2U. Thanks.

On topic: Kids are really smart these days. I know that anybody in where I went to High School up in New York would have sold it to other students to make a quick buck. I still like the classic writing of "bigboobs" on the display as a nice trick, but then again I'm simple when it comes to entertainment.