Calculator Input 12

[civeng80]

My old canon calculator I've had for 21 years finally gave up the ghost.

Ive been trying my son's canon calculator but dont like the input method, e.g. sin, cos, square root before number input i.e. operation done as you would write it on paper. They all seem to be like this nowadays.
I think the older calculators used reverse algebraic input, but they dont seem to have them anymore. I know Hp have RPN but dont want to get HP anymore prefer casio or canon.

Anyone have any suggestions ?

 

[jayrod12]

My brain still thinks in degrees. I can't visualize 1.309 rads but I can visualize 75 degrees. It's a simple conversion to include in excel.

 

[Archie264]

This is the thing that perplexed me about RPN; people who say it's better write this:
1) Type 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
2) Hit [+] eight times.
3) Result = 45

but really do this:

1 <enter> 2 <enter> 3 <enter> 4 <enter> 5 <enter> ... 9 + + + + + + + +

3DDave,

No regular RPN user does it that way. We do it as described by IRstuff, i.e.:

1<ENTER>2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+ (45 is displayed)

There are many scenarios where RPN requires the same amount of keystrokes as algebraic but there are no scenarios where it requires more. None that I can think of, at least.

 

[XR250]

If you have a 4 stack HP and want to find the powers of 2, you can hit 2 enter enter enter enter (loads up all the stacks) then hit x x x x x x x x x x x x x x forever etc.
Basically half as many keystrokes as an algebraic calc. Of course, how many people do this calc on a regular basis - maybe com. sci majors :>

 

[3DDave]

Excel has the Degrees() and Radians() functions to make it plainer which is in use; though I think the lazy MS developers should have used cos() and dcos() for clarity and ease. More perplexing is that Excel has no units management, making it possible to add degrees to dollars; it doesn't care. But at least they've added more clip art over the years.


Some algebraic calculators repeat the last operation. In the early days it was a hack to wire the "=" key to an external switch and enter 0+1=; the external switch would repeat the "+1" to work as a digital counter. If the number was the circumference of a wheel on a bike, for example, it was an odometer.

So, algebraic is 2*2 = = = = =, less strokes than the suggested RPN method.

Anyone wanting to make their eyes water on the subject of calculation needs to read 'What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic' by David Goldberg. One version appears here:

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html

 

[IRstuff]

It's on an algebraic calculator, but it's not a standard algebraic form.

TTFN
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[Leftwow]

I always enjoyed cascio calculators. They seem a bit more user friendly than the Texas Instruments.

 

[Archie264]

>>>Some algebraic calculators repeat the last operation. In the early days it was a hack to wire the "=" key to an external switch and enter 0+1=; the external switch would repeat the "+1" to work as a digital counter. If the number was the circumference of a wheel on a bike, for example, it was an odometer.

So, algebraic is 2*2 = = = = =, less strokes than the suggested RPN method.<<<

I will concede that that saves a keystroke over the equivalent way to do that using RPN...something I didn't think possible. However, having said that, that's not the reason I load the registers with a constant. I do it to multiply a string of numbers by said constant. That is, type in the constant, hit enter three times and from then on it's simply number, x, clear, as often as needed. Which, incidental, absent mistyping a number is the only time the clear key is ever used; it superfluous otherwise.