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7 of the Best Free Linux Calculators
An anonymous reader writes "One of the basic utilities supplied with any operating system is a desktop calculator. These are often simple utilities that are perfectly adequate for basic use. They typically include trigonometric functions, logarithms, factorials, parentheses and a memory function. However, the calculators featured in this article are significantly more sophisticated with the ability to process difficult mathematical functions, to plot graphs in 2D and 3D, and much more. Occasionally, the calculator tool provided with an operating system did not engender any confidence. The classic example being the calculator shipped with Windows 3.1 which could not even reliably subtract two numbers. Rest assured, the calculators listed below are of precision quality."
My hat's off if you can write an spreadsheet formula without thinking numerically. As fas as I know you can't define functions geometrically in any of the available spreadsheets.
I sincerely hope you're being deliberately obtuse. Being able to break a mathematical problem up into [optionally labeled] pieces makes the whole thing a lot more understandable to those of us who don't drink, eat, and breathe mathematics by choice. Is that really so hard for you to understand that I have to spell it out explicitly?
Having a spreadsheet implies a graphic way of organizing/presenting the information, but reasonably numerical skills are always necessary for writing functions.
But making sense of them again later is a hell of a lot easier if you've got it broken up into bits in a spreadsheet.
Also, there is a widely used (some people consider is somewhat of a standard) calculator language called RPL, supported by many handheld calculators and computer software (including GPL alternatives).
Oh good, suggest that math be made more baroque, that will help.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't think the realization has sunk in that Microsoft may have turned over a new leaf has sunk in for many people yet.
I didn't say they had turned over a new leaf, just that they may have. The vote is still out: will Windows 8 (or whatever) suck, or are they actually going to start to consistently make good hardware?
Windows 3.1 through XP all sucked, horribly. The few improvements they made were long available elsewhere, and there were many problems with each of them which they never bothered to fix. They've got two decades of shit products to live down; I think a healthy dose of skepticism is necessary.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Windows 3.1 was released in, what, 1993? 17 years ago. So the majority of slashdot posters are less than 17 years of age, by your reasoning. I find that unlikely as the median age in the US is 36.7 years of age. That is where most slashdot posters are located...
Yes. Obviously I was posting a well-researched and indisputable fact and not at all engaging in hyperbole.
By the way, you might (correctly) initially read that last sentence as sarcasm... but considering your ignorance of literary devices, I doubt it.
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