CAEC Math Part I: Surviving the No-Calculator Section

What Part I actually is

The CAEC Mathematics test comes in two parts, taken in one sitting:

• Part I: 12 questions in 30 minutes, no calculator. It counts for about 25 percent of your math score.
• Part II: 30 questions in 90 minutes, with a calculator and a formula sheet. It counts for the other 75 percent.

Notice what that means: three quarters of the math test lets you use a calculator. Part I is a short opening act, not the main event. Twelve questions in 30 minutes is also two and a half minutes each, which is more time than it sounds when the arithmetic is kept deliberately friendly.

And it is kept friendly. Part I questions are written to be solved by hand. If you find yourself grinding through a monstrous multiplication, you have usually missed a shortcut the question was inviting you to take.

The skills it leans on

Part I is about number sense — being comfortable with numbers and how they relate. In practice that means:

• Whole-number arithmetic. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing by hand, including long division.
• Fractions, decimals, and percents. Converting between them, comparing them, and doing simple operations. Knowing that ½ = 0.5 = 50% cold, and the same for the other common fractions, solves a surprising share of questions.
• Order of operations. Working through an expression in the right order (BEDMAS) without a machine to keep you honest.
• Estimation and rounding. Knowing that 4.9 × 21 is close to 100 is often enough to pick the right answer choice without exact arithmetic.
• Place value and negatives. Reading decimals correctly and handling signed numbers.

Habits that make Part I manageable

1. Estimate before you solve. On a multiple-choice test, a rough answer eliminates two or three options immediately, and sometimes all but one.
2. Use friendly numbers. To find 15% of 60, take 10% (6), take half of that (3), and add them: 9. No pencil required. Most Part I percent questions yield to the 10%-and-halves trick.
3. Write your work down. No calculator does not mean no paper. Jotting the steps prevents the small slips that cause most wrong answers.
4. Memorize a small set of facts. Times tables to 12, the common fraction-decimal-percent equivalents, and perfect squares to 144. This is a short list, and it covers most of what Part I asks.
5. Answer everything. There is no penalty for guessing. If a question is stuck, eliminate what you can, pick, and move on — Part II is waiting, and it is worth three times as much.

A ten-minute daily drill

Mental arithmetic improves fast with small daily doses. For two or three weeks, spend ten minutes a day rotating through:

• A few multiplication and division facts you hesitate on (everyone has a corner of the times table they avoid).
• Two or three fraction-decimal-percent conversions, said out loud or written from memory.
• One "real life" estimate: a tip on a bill, a discount at a store, splitting a total three ways.
• One or two written problems by hand, such as a long division or a multi-digit multiplication, to keep the pencil skills warm.

For structured practice, the free Mathematics I lessons cover exactly these no-calculator skills step by step, and the Mathematics II lessons pick up where the calculator comes in. For the bigger picture of what the whole math test covers, see what’s on the CAEC math test.