Re: (Trivia?) Display setting Message #4 Posted by Karl Schneider on 29 Nov 2010, 10:46 p.m., in response to message #2 by David Hayden
Quote:
My 30b in RPN mode with FIX 2 displays (1/70) as 0.014. Looks like it displays 2 significant digits. Enter 0.000033 and that's what it displays.
On pages 2 and 3, the 30b manual says that the FIX=N value is "the number of digits displayed to the right of the decimal point."
The 20b displays 0.01.
While the HP-30b does not seem to meet its specification, neither the HP-20b nor HP-30b handle this as did the "old school" HP's for FIX n:
The scientific models would revert to scientific notation (SCI n) if the number was too small for FIX n to show any significant digits. The business models, however, would keep increasing the number of decimal digits (FIX n+1) until one significant digit could be displayed, then use SCI n only if necessary.
FIX display on business vs. scientific
These display formats seem to have been tailored to the likely users of the respective models.
-- KS
Edited: 1 Dec 2010, 1:06 a.m.
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