Need some advice...

[Englandude]

I don't participate in calculator but my school's team is struggling, so I took the 2009 UIL A test just to see how I would do. I made a 124, which obviously isn't extravagant. I would like to get that score up to at least a 180 by district (April 3). What is the best way for me to prepare? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

[bradp]

get faster at crunchers

start recognizing the patterns of word/geo problems. for example, first page is basic stuff that anyone should be able to do. 4th page wordeds are tough, so they'd be the best to skip, 4th page geometry are usually triangles involving law of cosines/sines, etc. 5th page always has a line of best fit question ( i think... maybe 6th). 6th page geometry is one calculus problem, one hard problem. learn how to do certain ones and be able to recognize them quickly while testing

go through and solve the study list so you can do the last #66-70 quickly

[Englandude]

Okay thanks for the help. Hopefully I can get faster at the crunchers. I seem to be getting bogged down by pushing the wrong buttons. blah.

[jackkoenig]

Definitely work on the number crunchers. I know this is common so sorry for being captain obvious, but make sure to do all the number crunchers before coming back and doing stated and geometry. Make sure you're using an hp scientific calculator with RPN mode for the number crunchers, without one of these it's difficult to score much higher than a 200. I honestly wouldn't recommend working hard on the Study list unless you already are scoring 200+ because for the time you spend working on that you would be much better to be practicing to get number crunchers done in under 10 min (8 preferably but that's a little difficult) and going over 1st 3 pages of stated and geometry (220 if you get all number crunchers right and all stated and geo on first 3 pages). To do truly well on the calculator test you must memorize formulas for area, volume, law of sines, law of cosines; you must also know how to do basic unit manipulation (ie. from cubic kilometers to cubic miles, hp calculators help a lot with this), know how to use the solver on your TI-graphing calculator effectively, know how to do linear regression on your hp or TI, and know the basic use of integration and derivative functions on your TI-grapher.

Calculator really isn't a difficult test, it just takes some practice :-)

[B3ndythumbs]

I don't particularly like the calculator test...actually its the test I least practice :/ but yes my basic strategy is to do the crunches first. Usually u want to b able to do all of them in 10-12 min and miss 3 or less. I can do this with a TI 83 actually :) generally I think the geo problems are the easiest so do those first and work on the words last.

Btw, what is a study list??

[datnguyen160]

i would like to have some advice too, about the stated problem sections of the test...
it seems like i almost ALWAYS get wrong answers for these STATED PROBLEMS here, though i know the pattern
i could do problems with linear regretion, dy/dx, etc., the first page,... i also practice crunchers, i think i'm capable of doing it in 10 min., BUT i always ended up below 200.
not to mention that i also know the geometry problems too. idk, it seems like the stated problems are the only part that i struggle with. so help please! thanx

[AuSmith]

[B3ndythumbs]

err ya, what ausmith said. sometimes you need to practice with your conversions. they might subtly throw in some units u didnt expect, so mke sure u read the problems carefully.

umm, where do u obtain that stdy guide?

[AuSmith]

I googled calculator applications and found .

[datnguyen160]

[B3ndythumbs]

Lolwut? ONLY four years? How many years do u wanna stay for? And some of them are confusing. But the majority of them are fine, so u just need to improve ur p-solving skillz.

[datnguyen160]

[B3ndythumbs]

GAH ya that happened to me on numsen too...my penmanship isso bad :( my 9's look like 2's and 0's like 6's.