Ask Slashdot: Calculators With 1-2-3 Number Pads?

dotancohen writes "Although the telephone has the 1-2-3 key on the top row, most calculators and keyboards have 7-8-9 on the top row. Switching between the two destroys muscle- and spatial- memory. Do any slashdotters use a scientific calculator with 1-2-3 on the top row? I've already scraped and resoldered my Casio fx-82 calculator to have 1-2-3 on the top, and remapped the numpad in Kubuntu, but if there exist any calculators like this already on the market, I'd buy two."

Comments

Don't you have anything better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.

Re:Don't you have anything better to do?

[dotancohen]

Since the whole thread has gone into ridicule, let me defend myself (OP):
I use Anki to learn and memorize facts. When memorizing phone numbers and the like, I type them in so that Anki can check my answer. Then when I get to the phone I find that my muscle-memory is not only useless, it is actually a hindrance.

I have no problem operating either type of device, but the dichotomy puts up barriers where there could be bridges. When you need to remember a phone number, do you not mentally punch it into an imaginary phone? That spatial-memory device won't work if you sometimes type the number on a 1-2-3 keypad and other times on a 7-8-9 keypad.

I know that there are those of us who like to learn, and therefore use efficient memory techniques, and that there are those who ridicule those of us who learn. On a website for geeks, I had expected to find the former, not the latter.

Re:Don't you have anything better to do?

[Blakey Rat]

Another post covered this material, but you should realize that geeks hate spatial memory and systems that use spatial memory. This is the community that embraces vi and hated Classic Mac OS... do the math.

Re:Don't you have anything better to do?

[gknoy]

You have an interesting question there. I don't consciously imagine punching in a phone number, but as I do it my muscle memory helps me know when I've done it wrong. (Thanks for the link to Anki, also.) However, I almost never need to type in phone numbers on a computer, and it sounds like the only reason you do is so that you can use the memory aid tools. Do you do a lot of work with calculators? The way I type in numbers on a phone is normally with my thumbs, rather than my fingers, so it's (for me) a very different mental task than keying in on a keyboard. I don't think I'd have much overlap between the memory of typing numbers on my phone versus typing them on a keyboard.

A sibling commenter mentioned that they are terrible at remembering phone numbers. I am too -- that's why I use a tool to remember them for me. Why do you find yourself caring whether you have it in your head versus in the phone's memory?

Re:Don't you have anything better to do?

[gatkinso]

I rarely call people on my calculator.

Re:Don't you have anything better to do?

[gcalvin]

Who memorizes phone numbers anymore? Twenty years ago, I probably knew 100 phone numbers, and now I know maybe 10. My phone knows the numbers of the people I call, not me.

The calculator layout is much more important in terms of spatial memory than the phone layout. Data entry operators and spreadsheet power users have been using the 10-key format for many decades. If you need to make a change, make it on the phone, not on the calculator.

Re:Don't you have anything better to do?

[Spudley]

There are good reasons for the two layouts. They're lost in the mist of time, but they are good reasons.

Calculators derive their layout from a strictly mathematical perspective, and is probably the most sensible layout to work with if you want to practice your muscle memory.

The phone layout is that way due to the mapping of letters to the digits, which was defined back in the days of rotary dial phones. Putting the 'ABC' key at the top of the keypad made it easier to read. In addition, the in old pulse-dial system, the zero digit actually represented ten, not zero, and on rotary dials it was placed at the end after nine. That also helped to make the chosen key layout for phones seem more logical at the time, both for the phone manufacturers and for users who were used to rotary dials.

One thing you certainly aren't going to achieve is to get calculator or phone manufacturers to change their layouts. Both layouts are highly ingrained in the collective consciousness of their users, and no-one is going to buy a product which deviates from the norm. You may as well try to persuade everyone to go and buy a Dvorak keyboard.

So the short answer to your plea is: no. It ain't gonna happen.

But I can see hope for you: Smart phones.

While you aren't going to get calculators to change, smart phones have touch screen interfaces. I don't see any reason at all why there couldn't be an app that displays the phone keypad in calculator-like style. It may be the opposite of what you're asking for, but it would achieve the consistency that you're looking for between the two.

The only problem then is if you ever have to use someone else's phone to make a call....

Re:Don't you have anything better to do?

[Dun Malg]

Either way, it's a wasted question. Years ago, when Ma Bell was the only phone company and they came out with touch-tone phones, they patented the arrangement with 1-2-3 at the top. So if you want to make a calculator that uses that, you'll have to pay a fee.

That's not true. There's no patent for the 1-2-3 keypad (nor was Bell/AT&T the only phone company in the US, but that's not relevant here). Calculators in the form of mechanical adding machines predated the DTMF keypad by decades. When Bell came up with the touch-tone system, they actually spent a lot of money researching whether it should be adding machine layout, or 1-2-3 from the top. As it turned out, even experienced ten-key operators were able to dial phone numbers faster on the 1-2-3 pad because everyone--- even tenkey operators--- approached the task of dialing a phone with their index finger alone, regardless of whether it was pushbuttons or dial, because they were already in the habit of doing so with dial phones. 1-2-3 keypads are faster to use when visually hunting and pecking with one finger. Given that no one was ever going to be doing rapid data entry on a phone, it made more sense to use top-to-bottom order, because the reverse order of tenkey exists only to make rapid multi-digit data entry faster (i.e. zero under the thumb, pinkie for enter, and most common digits under the fingers as per Benford's Law)

I don't know what the hell is wrong with the OP that his brain doesn't have room for two different keypad layouts.

Re:Don't you have anything better to do?

[BluBrick]

Y'know, it seems to me that you have entirely over-engineered your solution. You've remapped your keyboard in X and switched the keycaps around. You've physically rewired your calculator and re-labelled the keytops. And now you're on the hunt for rare devices that breach established convention. Because you want every keypad you use to work like a telephone keypad. Why? Because you use a phone to practice entering non-phone numbers.

Dude, UR doin' it wrong! That's like trying to write by holding a pencil still and moving the paper underneath it - it works, but there's an easier way. Decide how you will use the number you want to remember. If it's a phone number you are trying to remember, you should use a phone keypad to commit it to muscle memory. If it's a number that you will rarely, if ever have to enter into a phone, use a computer keypad or calculator to do the same, or if you have a smartphone, fire up your calculator app of choice and use that instead.

Of course, if you have a smartphone, you'll realise that most phone numbers aren't worth expending effort to remember, because your phone will do it for you. If a phone number is worth remembering, it's worth keeping in your phone's memory.

Really??

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? It's that hard to switch between number pads on calculators and phones? That's what you're posting to slashdot?

Have you considered getting out more often?

Re:Really??

[rolfwind]

While I don't enjoy it, I switch between my own home dvorak and qwerty at clients multiple times a week. It look a lot to get used to... but I did with a lot of stumbles on the way. I can understand the frustration, I guess, but I'd just stick with the calculator numpad. Dialing phone numbers is largely on the way out, isn't it?

I'd rather have a phone with 789 at the top...

[Anonymous Coward]

...given that I use keyboards more frequently than telephone number pads.

Get a smart phone

[steveha]

Get an Android smart phone and write some custom Android software.

Either customize a scientific calculator program to match the phone dialing keypad, or write your own phone dialing software with a calculator keypad.

Plus there is the option of calling your friends from your address book and not even dialing the phone, or using Google Voice Search and just saying the digits.

I don't know what to tell you about lock keypads, public phone keypads, and the like. Just avoid them I guess? (Where I work, I can't use a bathroom without using a phone-style keypad.)

I agree with you that the incompatibility is annoying. I never bothered to do anything about it; I just adapt. But if you want to make your own custom solution, that doesn't seem sillier to me than the people who insist on using Dvorak keyboards or whatever.

steveha

Ask Slahdot: Calculators with Rotary Dial?

[makubesu]

Although the telephone has a rotary dial for dialing numbers, most calculators and keyboards have button pads. Switching between the two destroys muscle- and spatial- memory, as well as ability to use commas. Do any slashdoters use a scientific calculator with a rotary dial on it? I've already scraped and resoldered my Casio fx-9000 calculator to have a rotor, and plugged a USB rotor phone into Gentoo, but if there exists any calculators like this already on the market, I'd buy three.

Nope.

[Aladrin]

You don't dial a phone with the same fingers you punch a calculator with. At least, not if you're a touch-typist. And if you aren't, why would you worry about this in the first place?

I learned the 10-key calculator in middle school and have never, ever had a problem with the fact that some keypads are upside-down from the standard 10-key layout.

This is seriously a non-issue in every regard.

Are you kidding?

[Any Web Loco]

F***ing Google it. Seriously - is this what Ask Slashdot's become?

Re:Its the phone company that caused the problem

[Nethead]

Not true:
http://www.vcalc.net/Keyboard.htm

On a side note, back in my teens, I would make $5 for swapping the top and third rows of buttons on a standard WECO 25xx phone so that they matched an adding machine. The ladies in the office loved it.

Re:Its the phone company that caused the problem

[GerryHattrick]

I have a fully mechanical pushbutton dialler, that outputs pulse codes just like an old (UK) rotary. You can hit the buttons at any speed, but must then wait while it does it all inside using the energy from keypresses. Still works here.

Gimme a break

[DNS-and-BIND]

It is not difficult to "rememberize" 10-key layout versus reverse 10-key. This "feat" is well within the capabilities of subhumans who live in flyover territory, much less elite geeks who can get their questions approved on slashdot.org. I had no problem with it myself, back when I worked for a phone company and had to switch back and forth between the IBM-PC 10-key pad and the telephone reverse 10-key. The mouthbreathers I worked with picked it up after a few weeks.

Actually, now that I think about it, what's the big deal? Any uber-geek should be able to adjust to these circumstances quite quickly. And honestly: times aren't like they were years ago when I had to dial 50 phone numbers per day, and enter 50 results into the computer. Who the hell, in this day and age, sits down next to a "push-button" landline telephone and keys in the numbers for his friends? We all use mobile phones these days, it's all in the phone book. In the last...five, ten years? I've had to use my 31337 ten-key skillz exactly...zero times. When you meet a new person, you just punch in their number once: either by soft keyboard (iPhone) or by 1234567890 above qwertyuiop (one of those old-fashioned "blackberry" phones).

Oh, I think I see. On the submitter's web page, we can see the following bit of sublime insight:

Why are the lights in microwave ovens inconsistent with the lights in refrigerators? The light in the refrigerator is on when the door is open, and supposedly off when the door is shut. The light in the microwave is on when the door is shut, and off when the door is open.

Yeah, he's an idiot.

Re:Easy

[TheABomb]

You've clearly never looked at a photo of a girl on MySpace or a dating website. Phones are always held in front of bathroom mirrors, so it all works out.

Something of interest

[guardiangod]

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2019/why-do-telephone-keypads-count-from-the-top-down-while-calculators-count-from-the-bottom-up

The story begins back in pre-calculator days, when there were cash registers. We're not talking cash registers that scan, but mechanical things where you actually had to push the keys hard to punch numbers. The cash registers were designed with 0 at the bottom, and the numbers going up. Why did cash registers choose this organization? I was unable to find any clear answer. These were the days before customer surveys and mass marketing opinion polls. The people who designed cash registers evidently just thought it was the obvious approach--lowest numbers at the bottom, highest numbers at the top.

In fact, the earliest cash registers had multiple keys. You didn't enter 7 and 9 and 5 for $7.95; there was a separate column of keys for each decimal place. Think of a matrix, with the bottom row of 0's, next a row of 1's, then a row of 2's, going up. The right hand column would represent single units (cents), the next column for tens, then hundreds, etc. So, to enter $7.95, you'd actually enter 700, then 90, then 5.

When calculators made their appearance, they copied the cash register format. In fact, some of the earliest mechanical calculators (ah, how my wife loved her Friden!) had multiple columns, like the cash register. The earliest calculators had keypads that were ten rows high and generally 8 or 9 columns across.

When hand-held and electronic calculators made their appearance, they copied the keypad arrangement of the existing calculators--0 at the bottom, 1-2-3 in the next row, 4-5-6 in the next row, and 7-8-9 in the top row, from left to right. So, basically, they evolved from the cash register.

The Touch-Tone phone emerged in the early 1960s. Before that, there were rotary dials, with the numbers starting at 1 at the top right and then running counterclockwise around the dial to 8-9-0 across the bottom. Why would "0" be on the bottom? Probably because the dialing mechanism was pulse, not tone. Since they couldn't do zero pulses for 0, they did ten pulses, and hence put the 0 at the end. (Thanks to Radu Serban for this suggestion.)

There seem to be three reasons that the Touch-Tone phone keypad was designed as it was:

(1) Tradition. People were used to dialing with 1-2-3 on top, and it seemed reasonable to keep it that way.

(2) AT&T (the only phone company at the time) did some research that concluded there were fewer dialing errors with the 1-2-3 on top (possibly related to the traditional rotary dial layout).

(3) Phone numbers years ago used alphabetic prefixes for the exchange (BUtterfield 8, etc.). In the days of rotary dials, no doubt it seemed logical to put the letters in alphabetical order, and to associate them with numbers in numerical order. The number 1 was set aside for "flag" functions, so ABC went with 2, DEF with 3, and so on. When Touch-Tone phones came in, keeping the alphabet in alphabetical order meant putting 1-2-3 at the top.

So there we have it. Basically, calculator keypad design evolved from cash registers, while telephone keypad design evolved from the rotary dial. Tradition has kept them that way ever since.

Re:Its the phone company that caused the problem

[koala_dude]

My understanding is that Bell Labs tested a number of layouts before settling on the 1-2-3 matrix we use now as being simplest to master (see R. L. Deininger, Human Factors Engineering Studies of the Design and Use of Pushhutton Telephone Sets, 1960, Bell System Technical Journal [PDF]).

I'm not sure if calculator / comptometer manufacturers had their competing studies; I've heard that when Bell asked for an explanation, the answer was a shrug...comptometers were about 80 years by then, so I think the origins of their layout are as opaque and full of folk explanations as the QWERTY layout.

Regardless, I've encountered OP's request before...but for phone layouts which matched calculator layouts. I was working in an operations office a few years ago run by a person who was a fan of "Cheaper by the Dozen" who wanted to optimize our phone dialing speed (this was a fun place to work, even if this request sounds odd). We didn't have any success, but it was an interesting thought.

OCD Much?

[thechemic]

So if it "destroys muscle- and spatial- memory" as you say, that means that everytime you wanted to use your phone you would have to sit down in a chair, find a horizontal flat surface to lay your phone on and then dial with 3 fingers? Or do you do it the other way around? Everytime you want to use a numeric keypad on a keyboard you have to pick up the keyboard off the desk and double-thumb the numbers in? I have GOT to see this in action!

Re:OCD Much?

[Chapter80]

I learned to tell time at a much younger age then I learned how to use a phone or a calculator. And so I learned that numbers are arranged in a circle, with 1 just to the right of the top most point, 3 straight across to the right, 6 at the bottom, and 9 to the left.

Clearly the correct layout for a numeric keypad should reflect this!

Using mod 10 (or, looking at the last digit), the correct layout to match clocks would look something like this:

X 2 X
9 X 3
X 6 X

with the extra key going on the bottom somewhere. Filling in the corner numbers, rounding down, it should look like this:

0 2 1
9 X 3
7 6 4

The middle of a clock often has a couple of circles on an axle - one for the hour hand and one for the minute hand, so it probably makes sense to put the number 8 in the middle (which also has two circles). This leaves 5 for the extra key, and a final configuration of:

0 2 1
9 8 3
7 6 4
- 5 -

Does anybody know where I can get calculators and phones that match this obviously superior design?

-D. Vorak

Touch-Tone with three fingers

[jabberw0k]

For non-fixed telephones, you hold the handset in one hand and touch the keys with the other hand. And of course you use three fingers. Seriously, you dial a telephone with your thumb? Do you type with your toes, too?

Re:Touch-Tone with three fingers

[cskrat]

I use dvorak on a full size keyboard and qwerty on my phone. It only takes a context difference to keep the two muscle-memory sets from conflicting.

Re:OCD goes wrong?

[rwa2]

Wow, submitter is doing it wrong. It has got to be *much* easier to change phone dialpads than computer/calculator dialpads.

• speed dial
• smartphones have software dial pads (there must be an app for that, or hack the build in dial pad in the ROM)
• smartphones can copy & paste phone numbers
• google voice can connect your call from the PC, etc, so you never have to dial
• OCR of a picture of a written phone number & autodial (pretty sure there's an app or three for that as well)

The random public phone you encounter would be slow, but how often does that happen? I mean, maybe a little more often than when you're forced to use someone else's calculator (like, say, during an engineering exam?) but still...