Flack's Daily Smack

While I haven't tried to cheat in the way you've specified, this is only something that would work on college level classes. When I was in high school, no food or drink of any kind was allowed in the classrooms. Didn't matter that we had snack and soda vending machines at each end of the school and on each floor.

 

However, let me tell yo another way that also works, that I actually used lots of times...hehe.

 

Some of you may or may not know of my horrible difficulties in mathematics. I had to struggle to get through college algebra and trig. In fact, I had to take both of those classes twice each to finally pass them.

 

Anyway, we were allowed and encouraged to use calculators...especially the TI83+ series of calculators. These calculators are pretty basic in most of the algebra and trig functions they can do and require programs to do anything complex. Well, we weren't allowed to use such programs needless to say and our calculators were checked by the teachers/instructor before each test to ensure we weren't using programs on the tests.

 

However, they only tried to execute the programs to see what they did, they never actually tried to edit any of the programs to see what they really were. So, while I couldn't program myself, I use the programming function to create programs comprised of text notes. I would have forumlae, notes, and even sample problems and their answers text into the calculator as a program. If you tried to run the program, it would simply error out immediately since it wasn't an actual program the calculator could understand. But if I went into the calculator editor program mode and start looking at the programs, I could use it as a cheatsheet and scan for forumlae and anything else that I thought might help me on the tests. It did...quite a bit. I was flunking my tests and then started to get Cs and Bs on most of my tests from then on. And none of the teachers/instructors ever knew about it.

 

Oh...you might think it took forever to put these "notes" into a program on the calculator. Not true, part of the greatness of the TI83+ was that I could load stuff into from my computer. I had special docking software and everything for it. So, all I had to do was type it all out on the computer and then load it up into the calculator. Far as I know, this should still be something possible to do today. I know that most high schools and colleges still allow the use of a calculator even during exams, so creating your notes into a "program" that actually doesn't do anything, should be a safe way to "assist" you on such exams.

I personally allow any "real" calculator (i.e., not a PDA, iPhone, etc.) If a student wants to spend the time to put theories, equations and other text in the calculator and/or programs to help solve problems, that's fine with me. My classes are hard enough as it is

 

The only thing I don't like is that these calculators have IR capabilities, so students can still relay messages back and forth (though so far I haven't caught anyone doing this.)

 

However, some teachers don't like these calculators at all. I share an office with a chemistry instructor and she has a stack of 30-40 basic scientific calculators that she lugs with her on test day. I heard a rumor that she doesn't tell the students about this until the test

 

The time will probably come when TI will make a calculator with a full-color screen, wireless internet and a ton of memory. That will be the time that I do the same as my officemate.

In high school I don't think we were allowed a programmable calculator (if we were allowed one to begin with). However, my RS scientific/engineering/hacker calculator had lots of constants and converstions which I used. Typically we weren't allowed crib sheets or other notes.

 

In first & second year university (CompEng) we were typically allowed calculators and a one page crib sheet. (Of course, there were the exceptions like the E&M midtem where we didn't get a cribsheet and were expected to derive the equations for a dual dielectric coaxial capacitor from first principles - ick!) I think the only restriction was typically on graphing calculators. For an MSci class I programmed my HP to solve a particularly strange annuity question where my hand solving had come up with a negative number of years. Once the HP gave me the answer I simply wrote down my answer and left the rest of my written calculations as-is; and received full marks!

 

In third & fourth years we not only were allowed crib sheets, but often could bring the actual textbooks and any other notes we wanted to bring. The profs actually preferred us to look stuff up (and get it correct) than work from memory. (Like the time in on my high school physics midterm where I mis-remembered an equation as d=Vit+at^2) For one of those tests I actually learned what "companding" was from the textbook during the exam!

 

Then there are the actuaries where they get a professional association approved basic 4 function calculator handed to them for each exam.