How much to use calculator in Further Stats?

I was just reading through my FM revision book and they have alot of examples and pages on solving questions with all these methods that i usually use my calculator for.

For example inverse geometric on my calculator I just put in and get the answer, whereas they have a bunch of algebra and sums of series etc all to achieve the same values, and they make it out like that is the only method.

Is this revision guide slightly outdated or do I need to follow the way they do questions rather than simply plugging it into my calculator (cg-50)?

(Same with finding any P(X》Y) they switch into (1-P(X《Y)), where I just use my calculator)

Thanks in advanced!

Reply 1

yellowleaf23

I don't do further stats but in AQA pure there are some questions where they use algebra to stop you using your calculator. So if they ask you to find the inverse of a matrix with just numbers, you can use your calculator, but if they make some of matrix entries in terms of k or whatever you have to do it manually, as your calculator can't deal with that.