mechanical digital calculator

calculator Use in education

A student with the calculator.

In most developed countries, students use calculators for schoolwork. There was a first resistance towards the idea based on worry that the fundamental arithmetic abilities might be diminished. There's still some disagreement on the importance of the ability to perform calculations by hand and "in the head," and some curricula limit calculator usage until a certain level proficiency has been obtained and others focusing the teaching of estimation skills and problem-solving.

There are other concerns--for example the possibility that a student could utilize the calculator incorrectly but rely on the result because this was the answer provided from the calculator. Teachers attempt to stop this by urging the student to make an estimate of the result manually and ensuring it roughly agrees with that calculatedresult. It is also possible for an elementary school child to enter -1 x -1 and obtain the correct result, 1 without even recognizing the principle involved. In this sense, the calculator is more of a crutch than a tool for learning and can cause a slowdown for students at exams when they look up even the most simple result using a calculator.

Other concerns regarding usage

Errors do not only affect schoolchildren. Anyone can count on the calculator's result without double-checking the significance of the result--i.e. exactly where the decimal point is located. This problem was all but not present in the days of pencil-and-paper calculations, where the job of determining the size of result had to be carried out by the user.

Some fractions , such as 2/3 can be difficult to display on the calculator display since they are usually rounded to 0.66666667. In addition, some fractions such as 0.14285714... could be difficult to comprehend in decimal form--in fact the number is 1/7. Certain more advanced scientific calculators are able to operate with vulgar fractions, but the procedure in reality is awkward.Basic calculator

Calculators vs. computing

The primary difference between calculators and most computers is that calculators use only numbers Computers can utilize numbers to directly manipulate images, words, or soundsfor instance.

A market place for calculators is very price-sensitive. typically the user cares primarily about what is the least expensive calculator with a particular list of features, and doesn't consider speed as a major factor (since speed is typically limited by the speed at that the user can use the buttons). Therefore, the makers of calculators try to reduce any number of elements that are on the chip, but not the number of clock cycles needed to perform a computation.

In this case, instead of an hardware multiplier one could use a calculator might be able to implement floating point mathematics using code that is stored in the ROM, and perform trigonometric computations using the CORDIC algorithm because CORDIC does not require floating-point. Because of the same reasons, bit-serial logic designs are more common in calculators and bit-parallel designs prevail in general-purpose computers. A bit serial design can reduce the complexity of the chip but takes many more clock cycles.

Personal computers as well as personal digital assistants can do general computations in a variety of ways:

  • There are a variety of programs that can be used to perform calculations. These range from simple calculator emulators, to sophisticated calculators like Microsoft Calculator, to advanced spreadsheet software like Excel and OpenOffice.org Calc.
  • Computer algebra programs like Mathematica, Maple, or Matlab can perform complex calculations.
  • Client-side scripting can be used to calculate, e.g. by entering "javascript:alert(calculation written in Javascript)" in a web browser's address bar (as opposed to "http://website name"). The calculations may be embedded in an additional Javascript or HTML file, as well.
  • Online calculators like The calculator feature of Google's Google search engine, can carry out calculations on the server side.

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