My husband is a mathematician.
I figured, if he was teaching calc. My father is,
as well, and doesn't allow them either. But, I've
noticed that the younger professors seem more
willing to head in this direction.
Many of the scientific calculators could be programmed to have the contents of a "cheat sheet" in them, so he just made problems with "nice" numbers and he did not require the students to simplify answers beyond that.
Right. One could put whatever they wanted
in a TI-92, what I used. Even has a Qwerty keyboard.
But, the tests were also open book, which I strongly
support, so a cheat sheet is pointless, really. It forces the
tests to be more conceptual, and less memorization. Being
a calc class, of course, there's still a lot of computation, but
the focus was much more on setting up the correct method
for solving the problem, and less on simply knowing the right
tactic.
There are definitely arguments both ways. But, I find that knowing
how to use resources that you will likely have in the real world effectively
is far more important than cramming the different mechanisms into your
head. Especially when you are very unlikely to need to just do these from
memory ever again.
Actually, at the extreme end of the spectrum, a former professor of mine,
many many years ago, was arguing that we shouldn't teach children the
multiplication tables, or more math than is needed to be able to just use
a calculator. I'd be pretty unhappy without being able to do simple arithmetic,
but his point was about a waste of resources. He too was a mathematician.
Except for one final exam where he had a class full of cheaters, so he made the social security number test, where there were nine problems with boxes in which the student was supposed to put the nine digits of his social security number.
They still did not have to simplify their answers.
He had a lot of complaints from the cheating students on that one.
They said, "What if we refuse to do it?"
He said that it was their choice, but if they didn't they would get no credit for the exam, since there was no place for their names on the exam.
Cute. Especially the last part.