Technology

In some cases I'd argue, as an engineer, that having no calculator makes students better at advanced math and problem solving. It forces you to work with the variables and understand how to do the derivation. You learn a lot more manipulating the ideal gas formula as variables and then plugging in numbers at the end, versus adding numbers to start with. You start to implicitly understand the direct and inverse relationships with variables.

Plus, learning to directly use variables is very helpful for coding. And it makes problem solving much more of a focus. I once didn't have enough time left in an exam to come to a final numerical answer, so I instead wrote out exactly what steps I would take to get the answer -- which included doing some graphical solutions on a graphing calculator. I wrote how to use all the results, and I ended up with full credit for the question.

To me, that is the ultimate goal of math and problem solving education. The student should be able to describe how to solve the problem even without the tools to find the exact answer.

it's not always for the pain

Take a college physics test without a calculator if you wanna talk about pain. And I doubt you could find a single person who could calculate trig functions or logarithms long hand. At some point you move past the point to prove you can do arithmetic. It's just not necessary.

The real interesting thing here is whether an LLM is useful as a study aid. It looks like there is more research necessary. But an LLM is not smart. It's a complicated next word predictor and they have been known to go off the rails for sure. And this article suggests its not as useful and you might think for new learners.