mechanical digital calculator
calculator Use in education
A student using an calculator.
In most developed countries, students use calculators for schoolwork. There was some initial resistance from the concept due to fear that basic arithmetic skills might be diminished. There's still debate over how important it is to make calculations by hand or "in the head," and some curricula limit calculator use until a certain amount of proficiency is reached and others focusing upon teaching estimation techniques and solving problems.
There are other concerns--for example the possibility that a student could use the calculator incorrectly however, they should believe that it was the result provided by the calculator. Teachers try to combat this by encouraging the child to estimate the result on their own and ensure that it is in line with the calculatedresult. It is also possible for a child to type in 1 x 1 and then get the correct answerof 1, without realizing the principle involved. In this manner, the calculator becomes a crutch rather than a tool to learn, which can be a hindrance to students during exam time as they examine even the most small of results on the calculator.
Other concerns related to usage
Errors aren't limited to students in schools. Anyone could trust the calculator's output without double-checking the result--i.e. what the decimal point is positioned. This issue was virtually not present in the days of slide rules and pencil-and-paper calculations, as the process of establishing the magnitudes of the results was performed in the hands of the users.
Some fractions , such as 2/3 are awkward to display on the calculator display because they are usually rounded to 0.66666667. Furthermore, certain fractions, such as 0.14285714... are likely to be difficult to distinguish as decimal numbers. In reality this number is 1/7. Some of the more advanced scientific calculators are able to operate with vulgar fractions, however the method in use is awkward.Basic calculator
Calculators vs. computing
The primary difference between calculators and computers is the fact that calculators are only tools for numeric calculations and computers can employ numbers to manipulate images, words, or sounds, for example.
The market for calculators is extremely price-sensitive; typically , the buyer is concerned about the most expensive option with a specific characteristic set. But, he does not care much about speed (since speed is usually limited by the speed at that the user presses on the button). Therefore, the makers of calculators attempt to minimize the number of logic components on the chip, and not the number of clock cycles required for a calculation.
In this case, instead of an external multiplier an calculator could use floating point mathematics with code in ROMand calculate trigonometric computations using the CORDIC algorithm, as CORDIC does not need floating-point. For similar reasons, bit-serial logic designs are more prevalent in calculators whereas bit-parallel designs dominate general-purpose computer systems. A bit-serial design can reduce the complexity of the chip however it requires a lot more clock cycles.
Personal computers as well as personal digital assistants may perform general computations in a variety of ways:
- There are a variety of programs that can be used to perform calculations. These range from simple calculator emulators to advanced scientific calculators such as Microsoft Calculator, to advanced spreadsheet applications such as Excel as well as OpenOffice.org Calc.
- Computer algebra software such as Mathematica, Maple, or Matlab can perform complicated calculations.
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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
"). Such calculations can be embedded in a distinct Javascript as well as an HTML file too. - Online calculators such as the calculator feature of Google's Google search engine can perform calculations on the server side.
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