Calculator panic

A specific, common and entirely fixable anxiety.

What you actually get

You do not bring your own calculator. Where one is available it is provided by the test center or built into the exam software, and the current candidate rules govern which.

Check the rules close to your date, because they change.

Why that unsettles people

Not the arithmetic. The unfamiliarity. A candidate who has done every practice calculation on their own phone or handheld has built fluency with an interface they cannot take in.

What should never need a calculator

The conversions. Five mL to a teaspoon, 15 to a tablespoon, 30 to a fluid ounce, 2.2 pounds to a kilogram, a percentage times ten for mg per mL.

These should arrive as recall. Any of them you reach for a calculator to do is costing you seconds you need elsewhere.

Estimate first, always

Before calculating, decide roughly what the answer should be. A 20 kg child is getting single-digit millilitres of a suspension, not hundreds.

That habit catches the decimal-place error, which is the mistake most likely to turn a correct method into a wrong answer, and it works whatever calculator you are given.

Show the units

Write the working with units attached at each step, on whatever the center provides. Carrying units through catches an inverted conversion before you pick an option.

And if the calculation will not come

Flag it and move. It is worth one mark, the same as a recall question you could answer in twenty seconds, and there is no penalty for coming back to it later or guessing at the end.