Calculators in NIU Math Courses

The courses in our department focus on the theory, application and presentation of mathematics, and are not specifically designed to enable you to use a calculator. Nonetheless, we often suggest or insist that you buy a calculator because we believe it will help you learn better. We want you to interact with it to try pertinent examples which will help you learn ideas better; we want to give you more realistic applications involving very large numbers or many digits of accuracy; and we want to allow you to focus on the analysis of your problems without having to grind through calculations you have already practiced for a long time. On the other hand, we don't want you to think that mathematics consists only of grinding out computations, and we don't want to deny you the practice with skills you'll need later; so we often requre you to work things by hand, in steps, and explain what you have learned.

Calculators and other electronic devices will often be used for classroom demonstrations if the instructor can use the demonstration to motivate or clarify a concept. You are encouraged to experiment with your own calculators at home to further explore the patterns and ideas suggested. Your instructor may also suggest or require that you bring your calculator to class for precisely this purpose. Finally, calculators will be used to enable you to work with more interesting examples.

Please remember that your goal as a student in the class is not to mimic what the calculator does but to understand what it is doing and what the underlying ideas are. In particular, during exams we will usually prohibit the use of calculators from which you could simply copy an answer, just as we generally prohibit the use of books or notes from which you could simply copy answers.

Maybe. Consider your circumstances, and contact the department if you're not sure.

It will often be sufficient that you have access to an appropriate calculator, perhaps borrowed from a friend. However, please anticipate the possibility that the borrowed calculator may not be available at an important moment (such as during finals week!). Most of the calculators that students are expected to have in pre-calculus courses are inexpensive; you might consider buying your own.

The Department of Mathematical Sciences does not require or endorse a specific brand of calculator, so if you are required to select a particular brand of calculator for a course outside our department, feel free to do so as long as it has the right features for your math courses.

There are special-purpose and advanced calculators on the market. These will generally be of little use in your mathematics courses. If you have access to a personal computer, you might find your money better spent buying educational or graphing software which is easier to see and manipulate on a larger machine.

Students who expect to take multiple mathematical sciences courses may find that different calculators are required for them. If you know which math courses you plan to take at NIU, it should be possible to make do with a single calculator, or at worst a simple one (under 20 dollars) plus a graphing calculator.

Remember that, like any tool, the calculator is only useful if you know how to use it. If you purchase a deluxe calculator, plan on spending a good deal of time experimenting with its features before you need them for a class. Keep your calculator's manual where you can find it, and if you need to ask the instructor's help, bring the manual with you. (The faculty are not familiar with all makes and models.)

Remember to mark your name indelibly on your calculator. If it is an expensive model, take a moment to record its serial number. Many of these are lost and later found but ownership cannot always be determined. Remember also that batteries must be replaced occasionally.

All students are strongly encouraged to prepare for the use of technology after they leave NIU. The skills developed can enhance their success in mathematics courses, even though they are almost never explicitly required. This is especially true of the ability to retrieve helpful information from the internet, and the ability to evaluate and adapt to emerging technology.

Students taking a terminal class in the mathematical sciences (such as Math 101 or Math 210) are particularly encouraged to learn to use the tools as they would use them after completing their course. (On the other hand, students in courses designed as preparation for another course, such as Math 110 or Math 155, are particularly encouraged to focus on the fundamentals and theory and to learn to carry out the necessary computations accurately and efficiently by hand.)

There will be obvious restrictions on the use of calculators and similar devices on exams. Unless your exams allow consultation with other students, you cannot use a calculator as a communications device. Unless your exams allow open notebooks, you cannot use a calculator as a text-storage device or as an internet connection. If you have a calculator programmed to run algorithms which are part of the course goal, you cannot in fairness to others be allowed to use it on an exam unless it is made available to all students. If your exams are intended to test your use of the concepts to lead to a numerical answer, you cannot use the calculator as a computational device. A violation of any of these guidelines is considered a breach of academic integrity and can result in dismissal from the university or other sanctions as outlined in the Undergraduate Catalogue.

In order to enforce these regulations, your instructor may require that the memory of a calculator be wiped clean, or may prohibit an entire category of products (e.g. calculators with QWERTY keyboards), or may simply forbid all electronic calculators. Of course, the exams are written accordingly: when calculators are allowed, the students are asked to work with them efficiently and accurately on numerically-complicated problems; when calculators are not allowed, the students are asked to show an understanding of the concepts, illustrated with simpler numerical computations.