How to Practice with Desmos Calculators on your Exam

The item options in our testing calculators often have images, folders, and notes disabled.

The keypad is often laid out alphabetically instead of the qwerty layout of most keyboards.

The default angle mode is often set to degrees instead of radians.

At the top of desmos.com/practice, there's an option to choose your assessment and practice with the exact calculator on your exam. To learn more about the settings on the testing calculator for your exam, you can visit desmos.com/testing. You can find your exam either by typing in the search bar at the top or clicking on your state. From there, you can access pdfs explaining the differences between the calculator on your assessment and the Desmos calculators (as seen at www.desmos.com).

Here, we'll use North Carolina's assessment calculators as an example. North Carolina uses three different calculators based on grade level: graphing calculator, scientific calculator, and four function calculator. At the top of the pdf, you can see what calculators are used based on grade level.

Next, the pdf breaks down the differences between each calculator. Starting with the graphing calculator, you'll notice in the first three columns the three differences we noted above (images, folders, and notes; keypad; and default angle mode) followed by other differences such as disabled advanced trig, stats, anf geometry functions in the testing calculator.

It then lists the differences in the scientific and four function calculators. To see the differences in practice, you can access your testing calculator online at desmos.com/practice or desmos.com/testing or with our Test Mode app.