Calculator Applications (UIL)

Students in Grade 6 through Grade 12 are eligible to enter this event. For competition purposes, separate divisions are held for Grades 6-8 and Grades 9-12, with separate subjects covered on each test as follows:

• The test for Grades 6-8 covers addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, roots, and powers, including straightforward calculation problems and simple geometric and stated problems similar to those found in state textbooks.
• The test for Grades 9-12 covers the subjects under Grades 6-8 plus exponentiation, logarithms, trigonometric functions, inverse trigonometric functions, iterative solutions for transcendental equations, differential and integral calculus, elementary statistics and matrix algebra.

For Grades 6-8, each school may send up to three students. To participate in team competition, schools must send three students.

For Grades 9-12 each school may send up to four students; however, in districts with more than eight schools the district executive committee can limit participation to three students per school. For a school to participate in team competition, the school must send at least three students.

The test consists of 80 questions at the elementary and junior high levels (the number is not specified for the high school level but usually consists of 70 questions), which the student must complete in only 30 minutes. Judges give no intermediate time signal—at the end of 30 minutes, students must immediately stop calculator processing, but may write one final answer for the problem they're working on at the stop signal. Students must answer questions in order. A skipped question counts as a wrong answer.

Students can bring up to two calculators to use in the contest, provided they meet certain criteria. Calculators must:

• Be commercially available models (models once available, but later discontinued remain eligible)
• Be hand-held, operate silently, and operate without external power (rechargeable batteries are permitted but must be charged prior to competition)

For a question to score as correct, the student must answer it to the third significant digit—with allowable error in the third digit of plus or minus one, except for integer, dollar sign, and certain stated problems that require least significant digits.

• For integer problems to score as correct, the student must provide the exact answer (no allowable error) and must give the answer in integer format (decimal points and scientific notation are scored as incorrect).
• For dollar sign problems to score as correct, the student must answer the question to the nearest cent, with allowable error of plus or minus one cent, and must use decimal points and cents.
• For stated problems that use inexact numbers, correct answers require the method of least significant digits, with allowable error of plus or minus one in the last significant digit.

Five points are awarded for each correct answer, and two points are deducted for each wrong or skipped answer. However, questions not answered beyond the last attempted answer (defined as any problem where a mark or erasure exists in the answer blank for that problem) are not scored. In addition, at the high school level only, 3 points are given on stated problems involving inexact numbers that are answered correctly but with the incorrect number of significant digits, provided at least two significant digits are indicated and the more precise answer rounds exactly to the lesser precise answer.