mechanical digital calculator

calculator Use in education

A student using a calculator.

In most developed countries, students use calculators for schoolwork. There was initially some opposition to the idea out of the fear that basic math skills would be affected. There remains disagreement about the importance of being able to perform calculations by hand or "in the head," while some courses restrict calculator usage until a certain level of competence has been reached While others focus heavily on teaching estimation skills and solving problems.

Other concerns are, for instance there is the possibility that a child could utilize the calculator incorrectly but still believe this was the answer provided by the calculator. Teachers attempt to prevent this by encouraging the student to calculate the results manually, and then ensuring that it is in line with what is the calculatedresult. Also, it is possible for the child to type -1 x -1 and obtain the correct result, 1 and not be aware of the fundamentals involved. In this case the calculator becomes a crutch rather than a learning tool, which can be a hindrance to students when they are studying as they try to check even the smallest simple result using an calculator.

Other concerns regarding usage

Errors don't only affect school pupils. Anyone could rely on the calculator's output without double-checking the significance of the result--i.e., where the decimal is placed. This was almost absent during the time of pencil and paper calculations, in which the job of establishing the magnitudes of results had to be handled by the individual.

Certain fractions, like 2/3 are not quite easy to display on the calculator display since they are generally rounded up to 0.66666667. Some fractions, like 0.14285714... are likely to be difficult to distinguish in decimal form. In reality this number is 1/7. Certain more advanced scientific calculators can operate with vulgar fractions, however, the process in actual use can be awkward.Basic calculator

Calculators vs. computing

One of the main differences between calculators and the majority of computers is that calculators are only numeric tools and computers can employ numbers to manipulate words, images, or even sounds, like.

A market place for calculators is extremely price-sensitive. usually, the customer is more concerned about what is the least expensive calculator with a particular features set. However, the user does not care much about speed (since speed is limited by the speed at that the user is able to press the buttons). Therefore, the makers of calculators aim to reduce any number of elements on the chip, and not the number of clock cycles required to complete a computation.

For example, instead of an hardware multiplier, a calculator might be able to implement floating point mathematics with code in ROM, and also compute trigonometric functions using the CORDIC algorithm because CORDIC does not need floating-point. Due to similar reasons, bit serial logic designs are more popular in calculators while bit-parallel designs are the most popular on general-purpose computer systems. A bit-serial design is less complex for the chip but requires more clock cycles.

Personal computers as well as personal digital assistants can carry out general calculations in various ways:

• Many programs exist for performing calculations, ranging from basic calculator emulators to advanced scientific calculators such as Microsoft Calculator, to advanced spreadsheet applications like Excel and OpenOffice.org Calc.
• Computer algebra programs , such as Mathematica, Maple, or Matlab can perform complicated calculations.
• Client-side scripting could be used 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"). The calculations may be embedded in an additional Javascript and HTML file too.
• Online calculators such as one of the calculator feature of Google's Google search engine are able to perform calculations server-side.