No-Calculator Skills Outline

The GED testing people recommend eight (8) skills areas that are likely to show up in the 5 test questions for which you cannot use a calculator.

The Eight Skills Areas:

• Comparing positive and negative numbers, with or without a number line. (Could include decimals and fractions.)
• Basic number skills such as distributive properties, multiples and factors (such as, least common multiple LCM or greatest common factor GCF)
• Rules of exponents, including negative exponents, fractional exponents and multiple operations with exponents
• Absolute value and distance between numbers on the number line
• Order of operations with decimal numbers, fractions, mixed numbers or negative numbers
• Computations and numerical expressions with squares and square roots with rational numbers; non-perfect square roots (Example: 12 = 2√3 )
• Computations and numerical expressions with cubes and cube roots with rational numbers
• How to determine when a numerical expression is undefined (Examples: division by zero, square root of a negative number)

Note: a rational number is:

• Any number that can be expressed as the quotient or fraction, a/b of two integers (the numerator “a” and a non-zero denominator “b”.)
• Since “b” may be equal to 1, every integer is also a rational number

All of these skills are covered in MathOtter flashcards. Practice will help you master them!

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