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calculator on gre?

Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 4:21 pm
by TheSync
i realize this is probably a trivial question, but i was curious and my desperate need for an answer with as little effort as possible gave me the motivation to finally register here and post my first native topic.....im guess calculators are not allowed, but i ran into a practice problem that required solving a quadratic eqn which was not trivial, thus leading to my inquiry (exhale)

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 8:13 am
by sirjetpackbob
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but last year they did not allow calculators and I don't think there are any plans to change that this year.

If you're getting practice problems from the "purple" book, they are notoriously harder than the actual GRE problems, so don't use those to gauge the difficulty.

The GRE seems to put a lot of emphasis on being able to quickly estimate a correct answer without going through the detailed calculations.

Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 9:31 pm
by schmit.paul
order of magnitude is your friend. and no calculators were allowed last year, so I have to imagine the GRE Physics will still aim to evaluate rough mental computational skills this year. it's not as bad as it seems, and if you do all of your hand calculations in scientific notation it makes for quick work.

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 12:04 pm
by physics ferret
get used to rounding like a mofo (pi = 3, etc.).

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 11:59 pm
by grae313
no calculators, no cellphones, no watches, no mechanical pencils. Bring your ID, your admission tickets, the clothes on your arse, and five number two regular pencils. :D Have fun.