For a limited set of calculations, one can easily imagine programming a calculator or entering the problem into Excel. But, after about 6 months or a year, someone comes in with requirements in a different unit system; then what? In most other cases, you wind up effectively recoding the equation, just to make sure you got all the conversions correct.
In Mathcad, that's completely unnecessary:
> The equations are in natural form, so they're completely readable as recognizable equations like those in the text
> In most cases, an entry requiring, say, psi, can simply be entered with Pa, and that's ALL you have to do.
Obviously, much of this requires that the equations be properly entered and dimensioned in the first place, but the effort is not that different than validating the equation as used in any other calculation approach. The difference is that if done correctly, you ought not need to do that ever again.
One option, to get your feet wet, is to buy a copy of Studyworks for about $10:
While it's quite outdated, ca. 2002, this stripped-down version of Mathcad is still quite useful for numerical calculations, and provides a human-readable input/output for archival and documentation purposes. Note that Studyworks does not include programming and some higher-order math functionality, and only a limited symbolic capability.
TTFN
FAQ731-376
