SAT calculator program
Encyclopedia
An SAT calculator program is a software application that resides on a calculator
Calculator
An electronic calculator is a small, portable, usually inexpensive electronic device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic. Modern calculators are more portable than most computers, though most PDAs are comparable in size to handheld calculators.The first solid-state electronic...

 which is used in helping to answer SAT
SAT
The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a nonprofit organization in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still...

 questions. The programs themselves are different from SAT preparation books and classes in that they are actually used during the SAT test, and contain programs to answer questions with common SAT math formulas or simply answer common SAT questions.

History

The first person known to create such a program was Greg Myers of Princeton, NJ. Myers saw the opportunity to create SAT calculator programs while noticing that many SAT review books simply give the reader many formulas to memorize. Myers and his brother, Doug, landed on the front page of the "Circuits" section of the New York Times.

Current state of SAT programs

While the programs began as a way to simply hard code
Hard code
Hard coding refers to the software development practice of embedding what may, perhaps only in retrospect, be regarded as input or configuration data directly into the source code of a program or other executable object, or fixed formatting of the data, instead of obtaining that data from external...

 formulas into the calculator
Calculator
An electronic calculator is a small, portable, usually inexpensive electronic device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic. Modern calculators are more portable than most computers, though most PDAs are comparable in size to handheld calculators.The first solid-state electronic...

, they quickly evolved into more than that. Today, SAT calculator programs can be used not only to solve many SAT problems which require common formulas, but also to solve problems such as simultaneous equations, or to check the answers of a variable simplification problem. In fact, the actual programs created by Myers can be found online, but there are also some similar programs which claim similar functionality. One such example is a software program titled "SAT_OS," which stands for SAT Operating System.

Another is Zoom Math, a basic version of which comes preloaded on the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition.

SAT_OS

The SAT Operating System ("SAT_OS"), although not an actual operating system, is a software program designed for use on the SAT Reasoning Test, specifically, the Mathematics subsection. It was originally created with the intention of enabling one to rapidly calculate answers to most questions on the "New SAT" Math subsection. It was designed using the calculator-based programming language TI-BASIC. It is compatible with the TI-83+, TI-83+ Silver Edition, TI-84+ Silver Edition, TI-89, and TI-89 Titanium graphing calculators.

Description

The SAT Operating System was written and released as a beta version in March 2005 in time for the very first version of the "New SAT." The new SAT ushered in new types of mathematics problems, while others were discarded. "SAT_OS" incorporates almost all of the most recent mathematical equations, problems solving functions, and tools into a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI). So far there have been two unique versions of the SAT Operating System: one for the TI-89/Titanium graphing calculators and one for the TI-83+/84+/Silver Edition(s) graphing calculators. The version compatible with TI-83+/84+/Silver Edition graphing calculators was released on 5/3/11. The software is no longer in beta and is now owned and maintained by Calc-TechTM LLC. (http://www.calc-tech.com).

TI-89 Version Screenshots


TI-83+ Family Version Screenshots


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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