mechanical digital calculator

calculator Use in education

Student using a calculator.

In most developed countries, students use calculators for schoolwork. There was initial resistance against the idea, primarily due to fears that the basic skills of arithmetic would suffer. There's still disagreement over the importance of being able to do calculations using a hand and "in the head," certain curricula that restrict calculator usage until a certain proficiency has been achieved Some focus more on teaching estimation techniques and solving problems.

There are other concerns--for example, that a pupil could utilize the calculator in a way that is not correct but rely on the result because that was the result given from the calculator. Teachers attempt to stop this issue by encouraging the pupil to estimate the result manually and ensuring it is in line with that calculatedresult. Additionally, it is possible for students to enter the formula -1 x 1 and get the correct answerof 1, without realizing the principle involved. In this sense, the calculator is more of a crutch than a learning tool, and it may slow students during exams as they check even the most trivial result on an calculator.

Other concerns regarding the use

Errors do not only affect pupils in school. Anyone who uses a calculator can blindly rely on the calculator's output without double-checking the significance of the result--i.e. what the decimal point is located. This issue was nonexistent in the era of pencil-and-paper calculations, as the process to determine the magnitudes of results had to be handled on the part of the person using the calculator.

Some fractions such as 2/3 are difficult to show on a calculator display since they are generally rounded up to 0.66666667. Furthermore, certain fractions, such as 0.14285714... can be difficult to distinguish in decimal form--in fact this number is 1/7. Some of the more advanced scientific calculators can use vulgar fractions although the operation in practice is a bit awkward.Basic calculator

Calculators vs. computing

A fundamental difference between calculators and computers is the fact that calculators are only numeric tools however computers can make use of numbers to directly manipulate images, words, or even sounds, for instance.

A market place for calculators is extremely price-sensitive. most of the time, users are concerned about the least expensive calculator with a particular features set. However, the user doesn't focus on speed (since speed is usually limited by how fast the user is able to press those buttons). So, designers of calculators try to reduce the amount of logic elements on the chip, not the amount of clock cycles required to perform a computation.

For instance, instead of an external multiplier, a calculator might be able to implement floating point mathematics using code that is stored in ROMand calculate trigonometric operations using the CORDIC algorithm since CORDIC does not require floating point. Because of the same reasons, bit-serial logic designs are more commonly used in calculators and bit-parallel designs prevail in general-purpose computers: A bit-serial design can reduce the complexity of the chip but requires more clock cycles.

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

  • Many programs exist for performing calculations. These range from simple calculator emulators, to sophisticated calculators like Microsoft Calculator, to advanced spreadsheet applications like Excel and OpenOffice.org Calc.
  • Computer algebra programs like Mathematica, Maple, or Matlab can perform complex calculations.
  • Client-side scripting is a method of using to perform calculations, e.g. by entering "javascript:alert(calculation written in Javascript)" in a web browser's address bar (as opposed to "http://website name"). Such calculations can be included in a separate Javascript in a separate HTML or Javascript HTML file too.
  • Online calculators like those that use the calculator feature of the Google search engine may perform calculations on the server side.

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