7 ms·

No RPN. Neckbeard status confirmed. Calculators are still an unsolved problem for me on glass devices to the point I still religiously carry around an HP50G e

by csmuk 13y ago

No RPN. Neckbeard status confirmed. Calculators are still an unsolved problem for me on glass devices to the point I still religiously carry around an HP50G even though its 6x the size of my phone. Also from some bad experiences, it appears that some "app" calculators are also seriously badly implemented. Even basic trig ops can return stupid values at extremes which makes them untrustworthy. Plus none are reasonably programmable. My use cases are base conversions, simple CAS stuff, basic engineering calculations, unit conversions, financial (TVM etc) and generic math. I also canned a lot of knowledge in RPL programs over the years from fuel calculations to diagnostic tools and dice rollers etc. Please can someone solve all these problems (without doing half arsed HP calc emulation).

chinpokomon 13y ago
I just replaced the batteries in my 48GX. I think in stacks and RPN is a better system for how I think. I have 48GX emulators for my phone and still use them over more modern calculator apps. That being said, I appreciate the design considerations they've applied to this. I wish they'd make an Android version, because I might have been interested in trying this out.
- ghaff 13y ago
  It's funny how, for some things, you tend to be more comfortable with whatever you're used to even if nothing newer is objectively better. I used an HP-55 for years and then an HP-41. The newer HP graphic calculators never did a lot for me and I still use an HP-41 emulator on my iPhone for most of my calculating--though I'll pull out a physical HP calculator is I need to do a lot of calculating.
melloclello 13y ago
I'm working on an RPN calculator (with some pretty sweet gestural functionality) which solves approximately half of those problems. Wait, no, more like a quarter. Welp. It does return the correct value for sin(π) though (you gotta call __sinpi(x / M_PI) if you don't want to return -8.74e-8 or some ridiculous value).
- pascal_cuoq 13y ago
  > It does return the correct value for sin(π) though (you gotta call __sinpi(x / M_PI) if you don't want to return -8.74e-8 or some ridiculous value). This is ridiculous. Your calculator (most calculators) cannot apply sin to π, because π is not representable is their system (typically base-2 or base-10 floating-point). What you have done here is make sine worse for all values, including the representable value closest to π, in order to obtain what you think is a cosmetically satisfying result for the latter. Note that seeing the closest representable value to π does not mean that the user intended π. Perhaps the user obtained this value as the result of a computation and it's a coincidence. Or perhaps the user really wants to know what the sine of 0x1.921fb54442d18p+1 (the double closest to π) is. Hint: it is not zero.
  - csmuk 13y ago
    Nailed it. Nice to see someone who understands the situation properly.
  - ronaldx 13y ago
    > because π is not representable is their system (typically base-2 or base-10 floating-point). Casio scientific calculators do have an internal representation of π (it's treated differently from the closest possible typed value) and very nuanced representations of numbers in general. As you say, this is where calculator apps almost inevitably fail - representing numbers properly is really crucial to the UX, and floating point numbers are not sufficient.
    - csmuk 13y ago
      Spot on. This is one reason I still use my 50g - it uses decimal internal representation with known precision on every operation. Casios are a mess. They are actually made my Kinpo which do a shitty job of pretty much everything. The notable exceptions being the FX991MS and Fx5800P which are very very close to my 50g (which was laboriously tested on paper before I trusted it)
      - 13y ago
garthdog 13y ago
Haha! I was going to suggest Droid48 until that last sentence. Yes, I emulate my HP48G whenever I feel the need to fire up a calculator. HP RPN can't be beaten for serious number crunching. It's not pretty, but by god, it is EFFECTIVE!
ronaldx 13y ago
Right: calculator apps still don't compare to Casio hardware. It's surprising: when smartphones came out I said calculators would be first against the wall.
diziet 13y ago
There's a ton of calculators that do RPN on iPhone, for those who like that. Ie: https://sensortower.com/ios/us/incpt-dot-mobis/app/calculator-number/458535080 https://sensortower.com/ios/us/incpt-dot-mobis/app/calculato... https://sensortower.com/ios/us/vicinno-soft-llc/app/12e-financial-calculator/400147868 https://sensortower.com/ios/us/vicinno-soft-llc/app/12e-fina... https://sensortower.com/ios/us/tla-systems-ltd/app/pcalc-the-best-calculator/284666222 https://sensortower.com/ios/us/tla-systems-ltd/app/pcalc-the...
Lazare 13y ago
Yes. I really want a decent, pretty, RPN calc on all the platforms I use. Which rules out any HP emulator. I've got several amazing HP calcs gather dust in a drawer; I want something better than that. I've been pleasantly surprised with the built in calculator that ships with OSX; it's got a decent RPN mode, good keyboard support, and a nice stack display. Not brilliant, but better than what I've found for Windows or Android. :-/
- gcv 13y ago
  I use m48+. It's a decent replacement for my trusty old HP48.
  - acqq 13y ago
    Yes m48+ is the best way to have HP 48x. I'd also like to have the emulation of my HP 28S, I'm more used to it.
- jwr 13y ago
  Actually, I found HP emulators to be really good. On my iPhone, I use HP-12C emulator from RLM Tools (I found most other emulators to be inferior). When I really need it, I use HP50G. On the iPad, I use either m48+ or HP50G (it seems to be another fork of the emu48 code). Both work really well given the size of the iPad — very comfortable to use.
VLM 13y ago
In same boat as you. Don't laugh too loud but most of my "math" work is done via ssh (and ssh app on phone) and running octave or R on gigantic datasets. I went thru the same annoyance on my phone/tablet and although I have droid48, free42, and hc-16C on my android devices I mostly just ssh into a real machine. I have toyed with the idea of graphical environments like mathematica/maple on a real machine via rdesktop/vnc on my tablet, but I don't do CAS so much as stats where I stick with R anyway. And those apps cost lots of money for something I don't do much of anyway. Eventually with any problem, either you solve it or reach an event horizon where the UI is too horrific to use anymore. So when I can no longer handle the touch screen keyboard I just disconnect from the screen session (yeah, yeah, I know kids these days use tmux) and reconnect on a real computer complete with keyboard and big display. For medium sized arithmetic problems (as opposed to math problems), just use google drive's spreadsheet and then I can access it anywhere in the world on any kind of machine I have access to. So that's where "total of this column vs total of that column" level of problems live. An add on android keyboard built specifically for math, or more specifically for R or octave, would be interesting.
maxerickson 13y ago
Frink fills in some of those holes: http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/ http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/ (but not RPN and trig functions are floating point)
bane 13y ago
If you have an Android device, the TI and HP emulators are pretty good...especially on the larger screen phones that are popular these days. TI calcs https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.supware.tipro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.supware.ti... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Bisha.TI89EmuDonation https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Bisha.TI89... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.natygames.emu.ti92plus_free https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.natygames.... HP calcs https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ab.x48 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ab.x48 Casio https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.developstudios.casio https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.developstu... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=o2s.emul.hp49g https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=o2s.emul.hp49g
ghaff 13y ago
I use an HP-41CX app for my iPhone. I don't use 90% of its capabilities and it doesn't have the keyboard feel (obviously) of the original but it's pretty good for my purposes. I've used RPN since the late seventies when I got an HP-55 my sophomore year in college so I'm pretty wedded to it.
jwr 13y ago
Couldn't agree more. I regularly use a HP12c, HP48 and HP50G. However, the emulators for all of those are really quite good (for hp12c, get the one from RLM Tools), especially when ran full-size on an iPad. I am glad to see this effort because we really need some innovation in the world of calculators. The science of making them has stagnated in the late 1990s. HP50G isn't really different from HP48, first introduced in 1990. I think there is a widespread perception that calculators are no longer needed, because we have all those computers around us. But that simply isn't true. Many people still need to calculate things quickly, and that requires a good tool: a calculator with a well designed user interface. This is where most devices and programs fail. HP worked on this for more than 20 years and got really good at it, until the unfortunate reorganizations that got rid of the calculator division. I can't think of any other tool that will let me equally easily multiply numbers, convert hex to decimal, work with complex numbers, and compute a Laplace transform. And even if you are in front of a computer and have a powerful mathematical package available, there remains the problem of the user interface. For example: I use Mathematica for lots of things. But just try entering numbers using engineering/scientific notation: 4.7*^-6 and you'll see this isn't good at all for rapid calculations. I hope that someone will start where HP left off and design a better calculator using the huge computational power that we now have at our disposal. Without throwing away all the experience we already have.
- csmuk 13y ago
  To be fair both HP and TI have tried their best to do something better than their older lines but it's resulted in the following: http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/calculators/product-detail.html?oid=5367463#!tab=features http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/calculators/product-detail... I've used the emulator, but it's less productive than the 50g. Also TI's nSpire offering is just horrid. I don't use my calculator in education which means I'm completely forgotten.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
I just have an HP48 emulator on my android phone. It's pretty sweet actually.

by csmuk 13y ago

chinpokomon 13y ago

I just replaced the batteries in my 48GX. I think in stacks and RPN is a better system for how I think. I have 48GX emulators for my phone and still use them over more modern calculator apps. That being said, I appreciate the design considerations they've applied to this. I wish they'd make an Android version, because I might have been interested in trying this out.

ghaff 13y ago
It's funny how, for some things, you tend to be more comfortable with whatever you're used to even if nothing newer is objectively better. I used an HP-55 for years and then an HP-41. The newer HP graphic calculators never did a lot for me and I still use an HP-41 emulator on my iPhone for most of my calculating--though I'll pull out a physical HP calculator is I need to do a lot of calculating.

melloclello 13y ago

I'm working on an RPN calculator (with some pretty sweet gestural functionality) which solves approximately half of those problems. Wait, no, more like a quarter. Welp. It does return the correct value for sin(π) though (you gotta call __sinpi(x / M_PI) if you don't want to return -8.74e-8 or some ridiculous value).

pascal_cuoq 13y ago
> It does return the correct value for sin(π) though (you gotta call __sinpi(x / M_PI) if you don't want to return -8.74e-8 or some ridiculous value). This is ridiculous. Your calculator (most calculators) cannot apply sin to π, because π is not representable is their system (typically base-2 or base-10 floating-point). What you have done here is make sine worse for all values, including the representable value closest to π, in order to obtain what you think is a cosmetically satisfying result for the latter. Note that seeing the closest representable value to π does not mean that the user intended π. Perhaps the user obtained this value as the result of a computation and it's a coincidence. Or perhaps the user really wants to know what the sine of 0x1.921fb54442d18p+1 (the double closest to π) is. Hint: it is not zero.
- csmuk 13y ago
  Nailed it. Nice to see someone who understands the situation properly.
- ronaldx 13y ago
  > because π is not representable is their system (typically base-2 or base-10 floating-point). Casio scientific calculators do have an internal representation of π (it's treated differently from the closest possible typed value) and very nuanced representations of numbers in general. As you say, this is where calculator apps almost inevitably fail - representing numbers properly is really crucial to the UX, and floating point numbers are not sufficient.
  - csmuk 13y ago
    Spot on. This is one reason I still use my 50g - it uses decimal internal representation with known precision on every operation. Casios are a mess. They are actually made my Kinpo which do a shitty job of pretty much everything. The notable exceptions being the FX991MS and Fx5800P which are very very close to my 50g (which was laboriously tested on paper before I trusted it)
    - 13y ago

garthdog 13y ago

Haha! I was going to suggest Droid48 until that last sentence. Yes, I emulate my HP48G whenever I feel the need to fire up a calculator. HP RPN can't be beaten for serious number crunching. It's not pretty, but by god, it is EFFECTIVE!

ronaldx 13y ago

Right: calculator apps still don't compare to Casio hardware. It's surprising: when smartphones came out I said calculators would be first against the wall.

diziet 13y ago

There's a ton of calculators that do RPN on iPhone, for those who like that. Ie: https://sensortower.com/ios/us/incpt-dot-mobis/app/calculator-number/458535080 https://sensortower.com/ios/us/incpt-dot-mobis/app/calculato... https://sensortower.com/ios/us/vicinno-soft-llc/app/12e-financial-calculator/400147868 https://sensortower.com/ios/us/vicinno-soft-llc/app/12e-fina... https://sensortower.com/ios/us/tla-systems-ltd/app/pcalc-the-best-calculator/284666222 https://sensortower.com/ios/us/tla-systems-ltd/app/pcalc-the...

Lazare 13y ago

Yes. I really want a decent, pretty, RPN calc on all the platforms I use. Which rules out any HP emulator. I've got several amazing HP calcs gather dust in a drawer; I want something better than that. I've been pleasantly surprised with the built in calculator that ships with OSX; it's got a decent RPN mode, good keyboard support, and a nice stack display. Not brilliant, but better than what I've found for Windows or Android. :-/

gcv 13y ago
I use m48+. It's a decent replacement for my trusty old HP48.
- acqq 13y ago
  Yes m48+ is the best way to have HP 48x. I'd also like to have the emulation of my HP 28S, I'm more used to it.
jwr 13y ago
Actually, I found HP emulators to be really good. On my iPhone, I use HP-12C emulator from RLM Tools (I found most other emulators to be inferior). When I really need it, I use HP50G. On the iPad, I use either m48+ or HP50G (it seems to be another fork of the emu48 code). Both work really well given the size of the iPad — very comfortable to use.

VLM 13y ago

In same boat as you. Don't laugh too loud but most of my "math" work is done via ssh (and ssh app on phone) and running octave or R on gigantic datasets. I went thru the same annoyance on my phone/tablet and although I have droid48, free42, and hc-16C on my android devices I mostly just ssh into a real machine. I have toyed with the idea of graphical environments like mathematica/maple on a real machine via rdesktop/vnc on my tablet, but I don't do CAS so much as stats where I stick with R anyway. And those apps cost lots of money for something I don't do much of anyway. Eventually with any problem, either you solve it or reach an event horizon where the UI is too horrific to use anymore. So when I can no longer handle the touch screen keyboard I just disconnect from the screen session (yeah, yeah, I know kids these days use tmux) and reconnect on a real computer complete with keyboard and big display. For medium sized arithmetic problems (as opposed to math problems), just use google drive's spreadsheet and then I can access it anywhere in the world on any kind of machine I have access to. So that's where "total of this column vs total of that column" level of problems live. An add on android keyboard built specifically for math, or more specifically for R or octave, would be interesting.

maxerickson 13y ago

Frink fills in some of those holes: http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/ http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/ (but not RPN and trig functions are floating point)

bane 13y ago

If you have an Android device, the TI and HP emulators are pretty good...especially on the larger screen phones that are popular these days. TI calcs https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.supware.tipro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.supware.ti... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Bisha.TI89EmuDonation https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Bisha.TI89... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.natygames.emu.ti92plus_free https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.natygames.... HP calcs https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ab.x48 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ab.x48 Casio https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.developstudios.casio https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.developstu... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=o2s.emul.hp49g https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=o2s.emul.hp49g

ghaff 13y ago

I use an HP-41CX app for my iPhone. I don't use 90% of its capabilities and it doesn't have the keyboard feel (obviously) of the original but it's pretty good for my purposes. I've used RPN since the late seventies when I got an HP-55 my sophomore year in college so I'm pretty wedded to it.

jwr 13y ago

Couldn't agree more. I regularly use a HP12c, HP48 and HP50G. However, the emulators for all of those are really quite good (for hp12c, get the one from RLM Tools), especially when ran full-size on an iPad. I am glad to see this effort because we really need some innovation in the world of calculators. The science of making them has stagnated in the late 1990s. HP50G isn't really different from HP48, first introduced in 1990. I think there is a widespread perception that calculators are no longer needed, because we have all those computers around us. But that simply isn't true. Many people still need to calculate things quickly, and that requires a good tool: a calculator with a well designed user interface. This is where most devices and programs fail. HP worked on this for more than 20 years and got really good at it, until the unfortunate reorganizations that got rid of the calculator division. I can't think of any other tool that will let me equally easily multiply numbers, convert hex to decimal, work with complex numbers, and compute a Laplace transform. And even if you are in front of a computer and have a powerful mathematical package available, there remains the problem of the user interface. For example: I use Mathematica for lots of things. But just try entering numbers using engineering/scientific notation: 4.7*^-6 and you'll see this isn't good at all for rapid calculations. I hope that someone will start where HP left off and design a better calculator using the huge computational power that we now have at our disposal. Without throwing away all the experience we already have.

csmuk 13y ago
To be fair both HP and TI have tried their best to do something better than their older lines but it's resulted in the following: http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/calculators/product-detail.html?oid=5367463#!tab=features http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/calculators/product-detail... I've used the emulator, but it's less productive than the 50g. Also TI's nSpire offering is just horrid. I don't use my calculator in education which means I'm completely forgotten.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

I just have an HP48 emulator on my android phone. It's pretty sweet actually.