> I'm constantly encountering faculty who believe that graphing
> calculators should not be allowed in the classroom or on tests, at
> least below a certain course level. Their view is often the
> traditional one -- that proof is the heart of mathematics and
> calculators don't give students practice in proving. I think the
> pro-calculator forces have swept the field in Statistics, but not
> completely in calculus, developmental math, etc.
The attitude adduced here (which I do *not* ascribe to Geoff) is
misguided at best and lazy at worst. It is probably a combination of
both in most of its holders.
Of course proof is the heart of mathematics. Anyone who thinks that
"calculators don't give students practice in proving" can't have thought
very much either about the unfortunate mistakes that graphing
calculators are prone to make or about how to incorporate the necessity
for learning to deal with those mistakes into a mathematics course.
I used to think that it was a matter of expense, and that no-one should
suffer in my courses for inability to buy an expensive machine. Then it
occurred to me that *I* am the professional, and it's *my* job to keep
that from happening by structuring assessment so that those expensive
gadgets don't confer advantage. It does mean that I have to be clever.
--Lou Talman
Metropolitan State College of Denver