mechanical digital calculator

calculator Use in education

A student using a calculator.

In most developed countries, students use calculators for schoolwork. There was some initial resistance towards the idea based on fears that the basic skills of arithmetic would be affected. There's still some disagreement on the importance of being able to make calculations by hand and "in the head," certain curricula prohibit calculator usage until a certain level proficiency is reached and others focusing more on teaching estimation skills and solving problems.

There are additional concerns, for example the possibility that a student could use the calculator in the wrong fashion however, they should believe that it was the result reported from the calculator. Teachers attempt to counter this by encouraging the student to calculate the result by hand and making sure it's close to that calculatedresult. It is also possible for children to input -1 x -1 and obtain the correct result, 1 without understanding the concept involved. In this case the calculator can become a tool for a child rather than a tool for learning, and it can slow down students during exams as they check even the most simple result using a calculator.

Other concerns about the use

Errors are not restricted to school pupils. Anyone who uses a calculator can blindly use the calculator's results without double-checking the result--i.e. exactly where the decimal is placed. This problem was all but absent in the age of pencil-and-paper calculations. The task to determine the magnitudes of results had to be handled by the user.

Certain fractions, like 2/3 are difficult to show on the calculator display as they are typically rounded to 0.66666667. Also, some fractions such as 0.14285714... can be difficult to identify as decimal numbers. In reality this is a number of 1/7. Certain more advanced scientific calculators are able to use vulgar fractions although the operation in practice is somewhat awkward.Basic calculator

Calculators vs. computing

The main difference between calculators and most computers is the fact that calculators use only numbers, while computers may use numbers to directly manipulate words, images, or even sounds, for instance.

There is a huge demand for calculators is extremely price-sensitive. most of the time, users are concerned about what is the least expensive calculator with a particular features set. However, the user does not focus on speed (since speed is typically limited by the speed at that the user presses the controls). Thus designers of calculators try to reduce how many logic components on the chip, not the number of clock cycles required for a calculation.

For instance, in lieu of a hardware multiplier one could use a calculator might be able to implement floating point mathematics with code in ROMand calculate trigonometric functions with the CORDIC algorithm because CORDIC does not need floating-point. For similar reasons, bit-serial logic designs are more popular in calculators while bit-parallel designs are the most popular on general-purpose computers. A bit-serial design lowers the complexity of a chip but takes many more clock cycles.

Personal computers and digital assistants can perform general calculations in many ways:

  • Many applications are designed to carry out calculations, ranging from simple calculator emulators, to more sophisticated calculators such as Microsoft Calculator, to advanced spreadsheet applications like Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc.
  • Computer algebra software programs such as Mathematica, Maple, or Matlab are capable of handling complex calculations.
  • Client-side scripting could be used for calculation, e.g. by entering "javascript:alert(calculation written in Javascript)" in a web browser's address bar (as opposed to "http://website name"). These calculations are able to be embedded into a separate Javascript file 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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