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SpeedCrunch

speedcrunch.org

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71–80 of 138 posts

Re: SpeedCrunch

#71

Post by eichin »

taviso wrote: post #19
faffernot wrote: post #11

Am I a weirdo for using the console (F12) in my browser for calculating stuff like tips, rent/utilities for the month, and other such things? Lol.

No, I always use gdb :) It also has a persistent history, variables, functions, base conversion, etc. I guess it doesn't have unit conversion or a math library, but it's a great programmers calculator.

Hah, I used gdb print expression for a calculator for decades (especially p/x for hex conversions.) I finally switched to "just fire up a python repl instead" around 2010...

Re: SpeedCrunch

#72

Post by NathanielK »

granddave wrote: post #28

This is a great piece of software that's installed on all my machines!

That's one of my favourite advantages of free software. No worries about licensing, any computer I pull out of a dumpster gets a full suite of powerful software I'm familiar with.

Re: SpeedCrunch

#74

Post by NathanielK »

Centigonal wrote: post #8

This seems really cool (esp. WRT unit conversions), but I'm already pretty entrenched in using Excel, R, or Python for calculations, since I usually already have one or more of those open. Is it worth learning another tool to pick up something like this?

I find SpeedCrunch can be very useful along side excel once you get a feel for it. Often I use SpeedCrunch's unit conversion and SI prefix features to distill all the magic numbers I need and double check my formula. After that, creating a formula in excell (or another language) to deal convert data in a strange format is easy.

Learning SpeedCrunch is easy if you're already comfortable with single-line calculators. It has autocomplete that will help learn some of the SpeedCrunch specific units. For example, year_julian vs year_tropical, gallon_US vs gallon_UK are slightly different.

Re: SpeedCrunch

#75

Post by bufferoverflow »

CyberShadow wrote: post #69
seanw444 wrote: post #38

I used to use this back when I mained Windows. Ever since moving primarily to Linux, and getting familiar with Emacs, Calc mode simply beats every calculator I've ever used in total functionality. However, there are certain cases where I also like to use https://insect.sh if lots of units are involved.

Emacs Calc (not unlike much of the rest of Emacs) is a little ... special. By default, it calculates 4/2*2 as 1, because multiplication has a higher precedence than division. https://orgmode.org/manual/Formula-syntax-for-Calc.html

> because multiplication has a higher precedence than division

Wow. That's actually quite bad.

Re: SpeedCrunch

#76

Post by [deleted] »

marcosdumay wrote: post #61
seanw444 wrote: post #38

I used to use this back when I mained Windows. Ever since moving primarily to Linux, and getting familiar with Emacs, Calc mode simply beats every calculator I've ever used in total functionality. However, there are certain cases where I also like to use https://insect.sh if lots of units are involved.

You may like qalc. It's an apt-get away and does all those units.

[deleted]

Re: SpeedCrunch

#78

Post by bee_rider »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #75
CyberShadow wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs Calc (not unlike much of the rest of Emacs) is a little ... special. By default, it calculates 4/2*2 as 1, because multiplication has a higher precedence than division. https://orgmode.org/manual/Formula-syntax-for-Calc.html

> because multiplication has a higher precedence than division Wow. That's actually quite bad.

I think some people learned P-E-MD-AS as if MD and AS didn't have the same precedence. I mean, it's a convention anyway, so they aren't really "wrong" insomuch as just being unusual. But it does seem like an odd thing to disagree about.

I think there's also some confusion about whether the / symbol is actually being used as a single line equivalent to a fraction, which might introduce some ambiguity? I forget. The number of ways that people can misunderstand things is infinite, so it can be hard to keep track.

Anyway, parentheses are cheap and misunderstandings, even when the other party ought to take the blame, can be expensive, so I've taken up the habit of being generous with the things.

Re: SpeedCrunch

#79

Post by bee_rider »

kstrauser wrote: post #58
seanw444 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that not correct? I guess I should touch on my order of operations. I thought distributing was part of the parenthesis step, that came before MDAS.

The disconnect is that a lot of people mentally treat implicit multiplication with a higher priority than explicit, which is pretty understandable. For instance: 1/3x is likely to be understood as 1/(3*x), because otherwise it would’ve been written like x/3. If that’s true, then so surely 1/3(x) should be the same, right? Smarter people than I have argued both sides of this, and I don’t have a strong opinion except t…

Really though, order of operations is just a convention. Practically, I'd think of PEMDAS as descriptive rather than proscriptive (nobody is going to revoke your math license if you and your friends violate PEMDAS together). Frequent topics of debate or confusion seem to indicate a edge case in the living convention. Therefore, I think you are smarter than either of the debaters if you stick with the parentheses.
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