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Show HN: Insect – a high-precision scientific calculator with physical units

insect.sh

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Re: Show HN: Insect – a high-precision scientific calculator with physical units

#41

Post by sharkdp »

yodon wrote: post #30
matt4077 wrote: post #16

It unfortunately fails my go-to test for these calculators: ≫ 7.8L/100km -> miles/gallon 7.8 L / 100 km -> mi / gal Conversion error: Cannot convert unit L/km (base units: m²) to unit mi/gal (base units: m⁻²)

That's because your unit conversion is invalid. It's entirely possible to construct an equation that computes mi/gal from L/km (or from gal/mi for that matter), but the dimmensionalty of the two numbers clearly disagree. Yes, you can introduce scenarios like yours where "any human" would know what the intended meaning of the question is, but mathematically speaking it's incorrect and encouraging a calculator to perfo…

Yes, 100% agree with your comment. I'd rather have a calculator application that is maybe a little less "smart" in exchange for mathematical correctness and predictability.

Re: Show HN: Insect – a high-precision scientific calculator with physical units

#43

Post by sharkdp »

db48x wrote: post #10

Looks pretty nice, but no light years? No attoparsecs? You don't even have hogsheads or fortnights!!!!!1! Still, it's pretty good.

Thank you for the feedback. I'm always open for suggestions on new units (https://github.com/sharkdp/purescript-quantities)!

Re: Show HN: Insect – a high-precision scientific calculator with physical units

#46

Post by olegkikin »

foota wrote: post #29
olegkikin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these things work in Google, btw. Google has one of the best unit conversion tools, and it's built into the search.

I've always been frustrated by how Google's unit conversion doesn't integrate well with its calculator.

That's why 99% of the time there's no need to use the calculator, just type your formula straight into the search.

Re: Show HN: Insect – a high-precision scientific calculator with physical units

#48

Post by sharkdp »

slig wrote: post #4
sharkdp wrote: post #2

Hi HN! This has been posted a few months ago (by someone else), but it wasn't really finished back then. The feedback I got here last time has helped a lot to improve all sorts of things. Looking forward to your comments! Old discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13909631

Very well polished. Congrats on finishing it! I have only one minor issue: the REPL scrolling conflicts with the default scrolling acceleration on macOS. So just a very small movement on the trackpad and it scrolls all the way up or down. I believe this is due the "jquery-mousewheel" plugin [1]. [1]: https://github.com/jquery/jquery-mousewheel/issues/36

Thank you very much.

I'll look into this. Thank you for the reference.

Re: Show HN: Insect – a high-precision scientific calculator with physical units

#49

Post by raketenolli »

Looks nice, but is there a reason it interprets m^2 * Pa correctly

  ≫ 1 Pa * 2 m^2 / N
    1 Pa × (2 × m^2 / N)
     = 2
but doesn't automatically convert a result to N?

  ≫ 1 Pa * 2 m^2
    1 Pa × 2 × m^2
     = 2 m²·Pa
Same with W, J, s and all their relations.
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