Math SAT: Improve Your Score by Choosing the Best Tool–Pencil, Calculator, or Desmos

Learn How and When to Use Pencil & Paper, Graphing Calculator, or Desmos
When taking the Math SAT, students must solve 44 problems in 70 minutes. For each problem, they must decide which tool to use. Making the wrong choice of tool can result in lost time, incorrect answers, and lower scores. This book helps students make that decision.

Professional math tutor Richard Corn has coached students in the math sections of the SAT and ACT for more than 20 years. Because the SAT is online and adaptive, students struggle to make the transition to a new toolset. Not only are students challenged by the math content and time management, they also have to decide which tool (or combination of tools) to use to solve, explore solutions, or check their work: pencil and paper, a graphing calculator, or Desmos.

This book provides insight into making the tool decision. The best choice may depend on the type of question asked, whether you know how to solve by hand, the time remaining in the module, and your comfort levels with the graphing calculator and Desmos.

About Desmos
While many students have heard of the online graphing calculator Desmos, most haven’t developed proficiency. It turns out that Desmos is a valuable tool and is often a better choice than the standard graphing calculator. If you are unfamiliar with graphic calculators or Desmos, this book is a good way to start learning how to use them effectively. As you will see, Desmos is usually a better choice than the graphing calculator once you know how to use it.

What’s Covered
This book guides you in selecting which tool or combination of tools might work best. By using examples, it illustrates how to apply the tools to: Linear, quadratic, absolute value, and exponential functions along with operations on functions Polynomials, circles, systems of equations (linear and quadratic) Statistics (mean, median, and standard deviation)

Each problem is solved using each of the tools and the three approaches are compared. Where appropriate, there are discussions of using a combination of tools to save time or reduce errors.

Learn the smart way to solve problems and improve your math SAT score!