mechanical digital calculator

calculator Use in education

A student with a calculator.

In most developed countries, students use calculators for schoolwork. There was some initial resistance to this idea due to concerns that basic arithmetic skills would be damaged. There is still a debate about the importance of being able to calculate calculations with a pencil and "in the head," certain curricula that restrict calculator use until a certain proficiency has been obtained While others focus heavily on teaching estimation techniques and solving problems.

There are other reasons to be concerned, such as students may use the calculator incorrectly but believe the answer because that was the result given from the calculator. Teachers try to combat this by encouraging the child to estimate the result on their own and ensure that it roughly agrees with the calculatedresult. Also, it is possible for a child to type in 1 x 1 and then get the correct result, 1 and not be aware of the fundamentals involved. In this manner the calculator is more of a crutch than a learning tool and it may slow students at exams when they look up even the most minor of numbers on a calculator.

Other concerns related to the use

Errors do not only affect students at school. Anyone who uses a calculator can blindly trust the calculator's output without double-checking the significance of the result--i.e. which decimal point is placed. This problem was all but impossible in the past of pencil and paper calculations. The task of determining the size of results had to be handled in the hands of the users.

Certain fractions, like 2/3 are not easy to display on the calculator display because they are usually rounded to 0.66666667. Some fractions, like 0.14285714... can be difficult to identify when they are in decimal form. In actual it is actually 1/7. Certain of the more sophisticated scientific calculators can calculate in vulgar fractions but the way to do it can be awkward.Basic calculator

Calculators vs. computing

The primary difference between calculators and the majority of computers is the fact that calculators are only tools for numeric calculations and computers can employ numbers to directly manipulate images, words, or even sounds, for instance.

It is true that the market of calculators is very price-sensitive. typically , the buyer is concerned about what is the least expensive model having a specific specification, however, it does not consider speed as a major factor (since speed is limited by the speed at which a user can use the keys). Therefore, the makers of calculators try to reduce any number of elements in the chip, and not the amount of clock cycles required to do a computation.

For instance, instead of an external multiplier an calculator might be able to implement floating point math using code stored in the ROM, and perform trigonometric functions using the CORDIC algorithm as CORDIC does not need floating-point. Because of the same reasons, bit-serial logic designs are more popular in calculators and bit-parallel designs prevail in general-purpose computing: A bit-serial design reduces the complexity of the chip however it takes a larger number of clock cycles.

Personal computers and personal digital assistants may perform general calculations in a variety of ways:

  • There are many programs available for calculations. They range from basic calculator emulators, to more sophisticated calculators like Microsoft Calculator, to advanced spreadsheet programs like Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc.
  • Computer algebra software such as Mathematica, Maple, or Matlab are able to handle 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"). These calculations are able to be included in a separate Javascript in a separate HTML or Javascript HTML file, as well.
  • Online calculators like the calculator feature of Google's Google search engine are able to perform calculations server-side.

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