Re: OT: uCalc proto Message #46 Posted by DaveJ on 17 Dec 2009, 6:21 a.m., in response to message #45 by Bart (UK)
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So you believe everything your calculator spits out, not even caring to do a quick mental check as to the order of magnitude? (That's what you seem to be saying).
That's what everyone says when this subject is bought up, but it always misses the point.
The calculator is a calculating tool, if it doesn't easily give you the result you expect from it, formatted the way you want it, then it's not as good a tool as it could be.
If you have to do extra conversion in your head then your chance of error is greater, regardless of how easy it is. Mentally checking your result and knowing what to expect etc, is really a separate issue.
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By the way, all I was saying was it's easy enough to mentally go from say 1E-8 to 0.01E-6 or 10E-9 without pressing buttons.
Sure, but that's not the point.
I bet you'd get a tad annoyed if your scientific calculator gave you "0.0000000123" all the time instead of scientific notation, or engineering notation all the time when you wanted scientific etc. There is nothing wrong with wanting your tool to give you the exact result you expect.
BTW, a good engineering calc will have a primary ENG key, so it's only one key press. And when you get used to hitting it subconsciously it really is a valuable function you don't want to live without. But YMMV.
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Edit: but I caved in: keep the <ENG and ENG> buttons, I'll leave them as unused as on all my other calcs that have them :)
I will keep the ENG keys, thanks, the joy of being the product designer :-P
And that weird parallel key stays too, ain't I just evil!
Dave.
Edited: 17 Dec 2009, 6:30 a.m.
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