{"id":152,"date":"2016-08-26T12:49:33","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T11:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/n5\/?p=152"},"modified":"2025-11-25T07:38:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T07:38:25","slug":"me-and-my-calculator-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/index.php\/2016\/08\/26\/me-and-my-calculator-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Me and my calculator part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was rather shocked to find that my\u00a0new S1 class are really lovely but had never heard of the term average. Maybe I ought to have used the term mean, but I don’t think that would make much difference. So out came the calculators and I explained that mean average was all the numbers shared out evenly.
\nThe mean<\/span> is the average of the numbers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It is easy to calculate:
\nadd<\/strong> up all the numbers, then divide<\/strong> by how many numbers there are.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u00a0asked\u00a0student to use calculators to find the mean\u00a0average of:<\/p>\n

600,\u00a0\u00a0 100,\u00a0\u00a0 900,\u00a0\u00a0 450,\u00a0\u00a0 50<\/p>\n

The mean average should be 420, the mean must be bigger than the smallest number and smaller than the largest number.<\/p>\n

Some students got 2060. These are the ones that didn’t push the equals button between adding them up and dividing by 5 (as there are 5 numbers). So the calculator did the sum<\/p>\n

600+100+900+450+ (50\u00f75)=600+100+900+450+ 10=2060<\/p>\n

So using your calculator either do<\/p>\n

600+100+900+450+ 50= ans\u00f75 =420<\/p>\n

or<\/p>\n

(600+100+900+450+ 50)\u00f75=420<\/p>\n

Now this is OK with nice round numbers but we were using time, so students needed to fix their calculators to prevent calculator diarrhoea! (this is a Mrs Physics term and not a recognised scientific term)<\/p>\n

We can FIX calculator diarrhoea (the tendency to write down everything that comes up on the display) using the FIX button on your calculator.<\/p>\n

Here goes (I’m using my Casio fx85 or fx83)<\/p>\n

Step one: Press the SHIFT and then MODE button on this line under the screen. This\u00a0will bring up the menu.<\/p>\n

\"shift<\/p>\n

Step 2: Make sure that the calculator is in line mode, so press 2<\/p>\n

Step 3: Repeat step one but this time press the 6 on your calculator which brings up the FIX button. It will then ask you to record how many decimal places you need. This will depend on your values and measurements, but a suggest 2 is a safe bet.<\/p>\n

\"fix<\/p>\n

Step 4: Select the number of decimal places you want to use.<\/p>\n

Step 5: You’re ready to go.<\/p>\n

\"1div3\"<\/p>\n

Step 6: If you want to return to normal. Press the SHIFT followed by the MODE button and then 8 for return to normal. You will have 2 options, 1 (maths mode, good if you want fractions), 2 (line mode, good if you don’t want the fractions)<\/p>\n

\"Norm<\/p>\n

Try it and let me know how you get on!
\n \"Signature\"<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was rather shocked to find that my\u00a0new S1 class are really lovely but had never heard of the term average. Maybe I ought to have used the term mean, but I don’t think that would make much difference. So out came the calculators and I explained that mean average was all the numbers shared…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[1267],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maths","vs-blog blog-single wow fadeInUp"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":1267,"user_id":3,"is_guest":0,"slug":"n5","display_name":"Mrs Physics","avatar_url":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/OK-scaled.png","author_category":"","first_name":"Mrs","last_name":"Physics","user_url":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5285,"href":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/5285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsphysics.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}