A Calculator That Requires You to Estimate Before It Gives You The Answer

Qamacalc

This calculator might have a future in our underperforming schools:

From the moment pupils start using calculators they stop using their heads – for all quantitative work. The detrimental effect on maths education is well known.

Calculators, however, cannot be removed from classrooms anymore- they are indispensible because many results can only be received from calculators (e.g. root7, cosine70 etc.)

This serious problem, therefore, require an inventive solution:

A calculator into which one enters anything one would enter into normal (also scientific) calculators, but when the ‘=’ key is pressed nothing happens: The user must also enter a mental estimate, and if the calculator appraises the estimate as reasonable for the respective calculation – only then it shows the precise answer.

In classrooms where QAMA is the admissible calculator, students will no longer touch a calculator without using their heads too.

The name QAMA derives from Quick Approximate Mental Arithmetic, but QAMA also happens to be a word in Hebrew. It means: “How Much?”

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