What's Out There for Handheld Math?

PowerVegetable asks: "What's the story with handheld computation? Not address books and schedule reminders; I'm talking about the type of stuff computers were invented for. Anyone who's used Mathematica or Maple knows what desktop computers are capable of these days math-wise, but handheld computation seems to have fallen behind on the innovation front. Cell phones and handheld game systems have certainly enjoyed rapid advancement, so where are the handheld mathematical portable oracles? What's available that doesn't have obscure menu systems, bad displays, underpowered processors and unwieldy programming languages? Pickings are slim in the hard-coded calculator industry, but what about Pocket PC's or other programmable portables? Is there any portable solution out there that's more capable than my old HP49g?"

Comments

Ummm....

[Hanji]

Ti (Texas Instruments) calculators are quite powerful, especially the Ti-89 and above. 3D graphing, symbolic just about everything, ...

Unless I missed something skimming the post, seems like a good solution...

Re:Ummm....

[Bruce Hollebone]

You are.

Calculators are all very well, but I want something that can do symbolic manipulation, stats, graphing, data logging & manipulation (ie {(x1,y1)...(xn,yn) -> (a1,b1)...(am,bm)}, where n=/=m. See, I can't even write something that simple properly). I want my input device to be a pen, not a billion buttons whose functions I cannot decode without a manual four times the size of the device itself.

It doesn't need to be super-fancy. B&W is fine, but some graphics would be nice.

At the moment, the best solution fo me is a small paper notebook. Is there an electronic device which can replace my notebook?

Re:Ummm....

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Tablet PC.
(Not a troll - the Tablet PC was designed for people like you)

Re:Ummm....

[xenocide2]

The TI 92 is like a portable computer. Symbolic manipulation? Check. Indefinite integration? Done. graphing? Yes. The thing has a qwerty keyboard underneath the display. The 89 is essentially a 92 in regular TI style. I can't recall which language you program the both in, but I'd imagine it has the standard TI BASIC at least. The UI is menu based, similar to the TI 85/86 with more visual description.

Since its got a keyboard, you won't have to look up many key functions, unless you have a hard time with the alphabet.

Re:Ummm....

[afidel]

Actually what you do with Ti calculators is put your commonly used functions (Sumation, Integration, Derivation, etc) into your custom menu, then calling it up is only two keys away, one for custom menu, the second for it's numeric quick-key =) Spelling functions out does not work most of the time as the functions are called by an internal symbol which is represented by a human readable lable. The biggest problem with the Ti92/89 is that their CPU is DOG slow. The best solution I have seen is to run a Ti-89 emulator on a linux and ARM based handheld, of course then you lose all the nice hard buttons only to have them replaced by slow software buttons. My solution was to just take the laptop to class with Maple once the Ti-89 got unbearably slow.

Mathematica and Zaurus

[arcadum]

i've been using Mathematica on my zaurus for a while know... here is where I learned about it.

Re:Mathematica and Zaurus

[RevAaron]

pffft, lame.

I came pretty close to buying F1, but never did. It looks nice, but doesn't have all of the features that Maxima or Octave have, both or one of which you can get easily and free for Windows CE/PocketPC or Zaurus handhelds. It sure as hell is far away from being Mathematica...

Easycalc for Palm Pilots

[the_truk_stop]

I've found Easycalc for Palm OS to be a small-yet-powerful package.

Symbolic Calculator

[timdaly]

Maxima, a general purpose computer algebra system runs on the zaurus. Yacas, another computer algebra system runs on the zaurus. Axiom is coming shortly (once the glibc issue gets resolved). Octave runs on the zaurus. These are open source, freely available, research quality computer algebra systems. More are on the way.

Re:gee.

[Mad Marlin]

If the HP 49G+ is insufficient for your handheld computation needs, you're in a really unusual position. What exactly are you wanting your calculator to do?

He said 49G, no +. The 49G+ is pretty good though. 75-MHz 32-bit ARM9 CPU, 2.5-MB of RAM, and an SD card port, which can hold more than 512-MB. Anything handheld with more power would be called a PDA. And, after you get it, download my library of 116 additional functions for it.

ti-89?

[aggieben]

Good grief, man. Of all the things you said you wanted, what can't be done on a ti-89 or an hp49g (or whatever it is...I'm a ti-89 guy...can't stand postfix notation.)

Having said that, there's a nice open source clone of matlab out there called octave. You might be able to run it on a zaurus running linux or something.

As far as the state of 'handheld math' goes,

[Mordant]

I can add and subtract numbers less than or equal to ten with no problems!

Re:As far as the state of 'handheld math' goes,

[Ratbert42]

Learn binary math. I can do 10-bit and sometimes 20-bit math (or even 21-bit if it's not too cold).

I know of three for the Zaurus....

[Trelane]

Calculon (does 2d&3d charts and also allows you to change variables to see how it affects things, etc. I don't think it integrates, although I may be wrong)

Formulae 1 (for writing formulae and recording 'em; I don't think it does a whole lot of calculations, but I could be wrong. Note that it requires Java)

Finally, there's QPlot, which is essentially a frontend to bc.

Handheld Math Device of Choice

[Chris Tucker]

Depending upon my whim and need for accuracy past a few decimal points, either my Pickett Microline 120 or my TI SR-40.

Why, yes. As a matter of fact, I am an old fart. Why do you ask?

Discrete Maths and more - Pari/GP

[You're All Wrong]

http://pari.math.u-bordeaux.fr/

It's a bit like Mathematica, but faster, GPL'ed and amazingly well supported (i.e. bugs get fixed within days of reporting).

YAW.

Re:Discrete Maths and more - Pari/GP

[RevAaron]

When you say that it is a bit like Mathematica, what exactly do you mean? When you say it is a bit like Mathematica, do you just mean that it's a math app, and Mathematica is your only frame of reference? Or do they have similar strengths or syntax?

From my understanding, Pari/GP's concentration is number theory where Mathematica's is symbolic computation.

I have used Matlab/Octave, Mathematica, and Maxima but never Pari/GP and I'm curious what Pari/GP can do. I've the most experience with Matlab/Octave, and at least right now, there isn't a good Octave environment for either Linux or WinCE PDAs, so I am thinking of learning Maxima, as there is a good environment for it on WinCE at least (but not Linux PDAs ... yet!). But if Pari/GP would be able to do the stuff I need- matrices, eigens, some symbolic manipulation, etc- and be better than Maxmia in other ways I may consider using it instead.

PalmOS - LyME

[sysadmn]

If you're using a PalmOS-based device, look into Lyme & Sysquake from Calerga. It's a free mostly-Matlab compatible math language. From the website:

LyME is a port of LME ("Lightweight Math Engine", the heart of SysQuake) to Palm OS handheld devices. It implements more than 360 native commands, functions and operators, mostly compatible with Matlab, and 70 functions written in LME. It requires Palm OS 3.1 or higher and at least 1.5 MBytes of free memory. Palm OS 3.5 or higher is preferred; Palm OS 5 offers optimal performance and functionality.

Excellent documentation is available here.

two different great ones:

[laika$chi]

Power One:
Finance, Scientific, Graphing flavors.
Infinity Softworks
Alot like the HP, TI power scientific calcs. Has Pocket PC & Palm versions

CmplxCalcPro:
Has a powerful programming capability, but the UI is a bit rough. Only Palm, I think.
ADACS

Power48

[vlm]

http://power48.mobilevoodoo.com/

Power48 runs on palms and palm compatibles and it emulates a HP48 at the hardware level.

It is, however, slow and locks up by sony SJ-33 rather often.

It's not as good as a real HP48 because there is no keyboard so it is very hard to tap and click as fast as you can type on a real HP48

Re:Derive on HP 200LX

[CaptKilljoy]

The CAS used on the TI-89, TI-92, etc., is Derive.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I always wondered why TI bought out those guys.

Still, I believe that the HP 200LX+Derive combo is superior to the 68k based TIs because of greater RAM and a better display, not to mention the integrated PIM software (which was very good for its time) and DOS compatibility of the 200LX.

It's a pity Derive never came out for Palm or WinCE.

Whatever happened to the 80186?

[fm6]

I used to work for Convergent Technologies, which made 80186 systems running a proprietary OS. This is the first time I've heard of an 80186 DOS system. I've often wondered why the industry basically skipped that processor.