Calculator in Check Your Understanding sections

It doesn't appear that anyone actually views, responds, or makes site corrections based on these community posts, but just in case someone that is capable of making these changes sees this, this problem is a better example of a question requiring a calculator.


This is in Getting Ready for Precalculus->Get Ready for Conic Sections->Circle Equation Review. This exact problem is very likely in the quiz and unit test portions of this unit with a Show Calculator button to calculate the square root in the answer, but in the practice set in the article there is no Show Calculator button available. The point of these practice sets/check your understanding portions in articles should be to prepare you for the upcoming quiz and test questions, yet the questions in the articles do not provide the students with the same tools that the related quizzes and tests do. Please add the Show Calculator button to these articles.

I have this same problem. I'm doing precalc right now and there are many check your understanding problems that require trig functions.

Hi, Leoofthehome!

We'd love to have a greater understanding of the issue you're running into. Could you please submit a support request in our Help Center? Here's the link: http://khan.co/KA-support. 

Thank you for being a part of Khan Academy!

MDabney, the example in your opening post – as you realized – does not really require a calculator. Dividing by −0.5 is equivalent to ÷ −½ is equivalent to × −2 (division is multiplication by reciprocal).

As to the example in your subsequent post, I guess it would be better to rephrase the question “what is the square of the radius?” This eliminates the need of taking the square root. Taking roots is not what the article is about.

The fact that you can calculate this particular value easily in this case doesn't mean that you should require someone to do that -- as you said in the next paragraph, multiplying by the reciprocal to accomplish division is not the point of the article. The point of the article is to allow you to learn the covered material and prepare you for answering questions correctly in the practice, quiz, and test assignments. Not having a calculator here when there is a calculator available on the exact same type of question in the quiz and test assignments does not prepare you for taking those quizzes and tests. 

And for the second part, sure, you could rewrite every single article question on the Khan Academy website in a way that wouldn't require the use of a calculator, but why? Just make calculators available in the articles, as they should be, so that the articles prepare you for the questions you'll see in the future. It's baffling that I'm clicking the link in my post from 5 years ago (and the circle one) and seeing that nothing has changed. How am I supposed to know that the square root of 48 is approximately 6.93 without a calculator? That's a worthless question for any of your users that cannot afford a calculator if you're not providing them with one.