[…] a guy who has strong opinions about calculators. Most people don’t actually pay much attention to calculators or calculator apps they use. I […]

I use Octave almost exclusively. It’s free (libre/beer), and I can script it to operate on a whole directory worth of files. It might be overkill for some addition, but I just fire it up once the desktop is done loading and minimize until needed, no reason not to use it then.

I have an hp-48g. very nice for vector math.

I went through a Matlab phase before I found out about opensource software. Then it was a Scilab phase. Then Octave.

Nowadays I do all of my scientific calcs in Python using Numpy/Scipy. If you haven’t looked at or used them, it’s worthwhile (if you’re still doing serious calculations).

I clicked one of the related posts, which got me a bit confused. I thought I was reading an updated version of the this post…

When I was in high school, calculators were not allowed, but we learned to use log tables and do interpolations from them.

The HP48 series was my favorite hardware calculator, especially since the TI calculators were popular, and people only asked to borrow my calculator ONCE, and never again….

Software:

bc (of course), and Maple.

… MathLab…

It’s actually MatLab. “Mat” doesn’t stand for math, but matrix. As you might’ve noticed, MatLab is very much focused around the use of matrices. :)

For the record, this is not a calculator:

Try view, scientific. Not exactly a TI-8* replacement, but it does have parentheses and essential scientific functions and compares with an ’80s/’90s non-graphing scientific calculator.

Why do you need virtual buttons on the screen?

I think the reasoning is that the calculator has some functions where it’s not obvious which keys you would use (memory functions, sqrt, 1/x and also much more in scientific mode.) And then it would be silly to include buttons for just those functions and not the numerals and other operators.

This is how a real software calculator should look like: [Speedcrunch]

There’s a similar widget in OSX that actually using Safari’s Javascript engine. Pretty neat.

Well, it turns out they did not ditch it. Apparently it became it’s own project which turned into Microsoft Math 4.0, but no one told me.

Looking good. Let’s check the system requirements.

Windows XP (32-bit) with Service Pack 3 (SP3)

That’s what I use. Looking good.

1 GHz Pentium processor or equivalent (recommended). 512 MB or more (recommended)

LOOKING GOOD!

Video card with 64 MG of video RAM

Dude! I don’t have 64 mega-Gauss of video memory… That’s like right in the middle of an MRI scan and a neutron star, on a log scale!

In all seriousness, though, Wolfram Alpha is pretty cool if you need to look something up quickly. It can calculate values, solve equations, and do simple graphing.

Then there’s always things like EvalDraw, PolyDraw and one more tool that I can’t remember the name of, if you want to do more fancy and less mathematically strict graphing,

Luke Maciak wrote:

@ IceBrain:
Heh! Good old Wolfram. I forget it can do stuff like that.
Is it worth buying the iPhone app for $2?

I have no idea, I’m still using a Nokia E65 with no Internet connection (besides Wifi).

Also, very true – why the hell are the TI calculators still so expensive? It’s crazy!

Didn’t you post about this in the past? It’s purely based on lack of competition; the school system standardized on a few TI models as ‘allowed’ in tests, exams, etc, so now they can jack up prices all they want. How’s going to buy a cheaper calc if they can’t use it when they really need?

For simple tasks, I use bc. When I need a little more power, I use emacs-calc, which handles matrices, complex numbers, numerical root finding and even symbolic algebra. Of course, if I need even more (like solving differential equations), I just fire up Mathematica or Octave.

@ Athanor:

One of my CS professors had one of those. It was sort of a running joke – each semester he would find some excuse to lend it to an unsuspecting, clueless student and watch him squirm. :)

@ Phil:

Wow, that sucks. I remember these things to be freakishly expensive.

@ Rob:

Nice. Glad I could help. Btw, I found some TI calc emulators of the iPhone but none of them are free.

@ IceBrain:

Heh! Good old Wolfram. I forget it can do stuff like that.

Is it worth buying the iPhone app for $2?

@ jambarama:

Most of my friends had TI-83’s. I decided to buy the slightly newer version because I had no clue which one I needed. The downside was that we could not share games. The upside was that mine had more features. Everyone actually wanted to borrow it for the tests because it had the automatic solvers and etc…

@ Chris:

Emacs == Operating System. :P

@ rev:

I never really caught the RPN bug. I mean, I see it’s benefits – I just never actually used it. Well, other than my occasional dabbling with Lisp.

@ Nathan:

There is also the good old bc.

Also, very true – why the hell are the TI calculators still so expensive? It’s crazy!

@ MrJones:

I only stole the TI pick, the Mickey Mouse and the iPhone app (out of laziness really). I took the rest of the screen shots myself using Alt+PrintScr. Why? Am I missing some fine point of screen shot taking on Vista?

@ Eric:

Firstly, hating math is like hating gravity or oxygen. It’s a bit of an absurd thing to hate. At least that’s my opinion.

And yes, it was designed for average non-scientist, non-techie user. Still, some “features” do not make sense. Like the one-cell display. Why can’t they use a scrollable window with calculation history? Why use the silly MR, MC functions when the user can copy and paste results? Some of these design choices are just blind replication of functionality. Breaking with them would yield a better, more user friendly application. But I guess the fear was that clueless users will be frightened by a UI that does not look exactly like the Mickey Mouse calculator.

When I was in highschool they did not allow calculators.

The software calculator that is included with windows has multiple modes but is not really designed for people who are into math. It is designed for the average person who just needs to do a quick calculation and hates math.