Nostalgia and fun with calculators
ludditus.com
ludditus.com
> Simply put, CASIO is the king, and fx-991EX, whatever you call it, is the mother of all calculators, both in build quality and features
Let me introduce to you the DM-42, the ultimate calculator
https://www.swissmicros.com/dm42.php
Precision? 34 decimal digits
Build quality? Steel case for starters
Keypad? Harks back to those classic HPs in feel
Screen? High-res, high contrast
Performance? 24 MHz ARM core
And best of all? Fully free firmware that you can verify and modify to your hearts content.
Damn...they're not fucking around here. That's awesomely excessive. I've never really been one to drool over fancy calculators. But this one looks pretty fucking awesome.
As far as I know, they don't make them anymore, which is a shame. They were great. Slow BASIC, but the BASIC was amazing and easy to use.
Yes. And the old organizers. Gulp
I do not understand why people do not use calculators, if you are in any engineering profession, it makes life so much easier. No, wolfram alpha, google, siri, python or bc are not the same thing at all.
Why not? A combination of the plain old Windows calculator (scientific and programmer modes) and DDG/Google for unit conversions has worked well for me for years, and doesn't require that I move my fingers off the keyboard.
Also, I often want to do a series of calculations, for which an RPN calculator with a stack (you can see the top 7 levels) is uniquely suited.
As another example, unit conversions (basically, convert between every unit known to man) is something I use every day. It takes about 6 keystrokes to convert from anything to pretty much anything on a HP-50G.
I'm sorry, but you don't get to deny responsibility of what goes on your website, and I find it frankly concerning that you are unaware of what is using cookies (it's StatCounter, just FYI).
On topic, I don't think the author of this article understands how the calculator he's using work; the calculators (at least the Casio one; I have the 115 ES Plus and I think it's functionally identical to the 991 ES Plus) are actually just computing the integrals numerically and then converting to fractions because the error in result was smaller than the the threshold needed to convert it to a fraction. There is no "smarts" (i.e. a CAS) involved.
Then why can't they display 9 instead of 9.000000007? What is that threshold if 0.7e-9 not small enough? And, are you telling me that computing integral(sin(x)dx from 0 to pi/3) can be done with better precision than 0.7e-9, whereas arcsin(arccos(arctan(tan(cos(sin(9)))))) cannot?
Otherwise, of course I don't know how these devices work internally. But have you designed one, or you're just assuming things?
* The largest epsilon that the calculator is willing is confident about showing to the user is about 10^-13. (0.1 + 10^-13 - 0.1 = 10^-13, 0.1 + 10^-14 - 0.1 = 0)
* The calculator will show about 10 digits of precision. (0.1 + 10^-10 = .1000000001, 0.1 + 10^-11 = 0.1)
* Rounding seems to occur at the last digit of internal precision, perhaps at a 10^-14/10^-15 digit that isn't shown? This might mean the calculator is using double precision. (.5-10^13=0.5, .5-10^-14=1/2)
I think the results you got are pretty consistent with this. First of all, the sequence of trigonometric operations you performed are quite lossy, since you're exercising a very small range and you perform them repeatedly, which magnifies the error. Performing the integral is quite accurate; even a simple midpoint Riemann sum with 1000 subdivisions is accurate to one part in 10^12).
FYI, you seem to have been shadowbanned (I have chosen to vouch for the one you made here because it was somewhat reasonable and so I could respond to it), which is not surprising considering your other comments.
As for shadowbanning... all I want to say is this. IMNSO opinion, whoever chooses to comment on places like this or like Reddit is an highly impolite, because that's what blogs are for, and commenting is allowed on my blog (moderated, so one wouldn't see a comment right away).
I am sick of people ranting here or on reddit like: "oh, look of what crap some guy is saying somewhere," or "he's wrong wrt to this thing" ... but why on Earth aren't such comments made AT THE ORIGINAL BLOG POST?
If and only if the OP deletes your comment, only then posting here makes sense: "that narcissistic guy didn't accept comments, so I'll put them here: blah-blah."
I can't understand you, people.
The result is that interesting and useful information being shared by amateurs is systematically being targeted and banned from the internet. Soon everything will be corporate views only thanks to these laws and their intolerant fundamentalist advocates, both which are intentionally destroying vast parts of human culture and knowledge. For this reason, these laws, and their advocates both, are extremely evil entities.
That's some nice alliteration you've got there, but I'm still of the opinion that you are responsible for what goes on your website. I run a blog just like the author does, but I unlike him I am not flippant about legislation designed to protect my readers' privacy. Since it's my website, I can ensure that I don't run cookies at all, which means I don't have to hire "lawyers and tech experts". And finally, I'm pretty sure the comment was automatically flagged due to its tone and the fact that the account was new.