On 01/06/2023 12.22, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
In that talk, [Kahan] showed that all calculators made bozo errors, many
unique to a calculator. As a consultant to Victor, he got their
errors fixed. I don't remember whether HP and TI listened to him.
This makes me very wary of random-brand calculators.
I understand that concern. And while I should be all "take nobody's
word" about this, my retired friends showed me the verification work
he'd done. There's a strong chance that the $1 wonder is a knockoff Casio.
You might enjoy this Julia Evans mini-zine on floating point:
https://wizardzines.com/comics/floating-point/
While I was buying and not using cheap calculators, by cubicle-mate
Henry Spencer was buying and open-carrying fancy HP ones. I got a
couple of cast-offs and they were wonderful, but still not useful.
them's fightin' words! At least to this son of an HP dealer they are. ☺
You may have one of my cast-off HP calculators (an HP 49).
I too have too many calculators:
* a fleet of at least three HP48s, plus Droid48 on my phone. The 48 is
just such a good calculator. In RPN mode, no-one will ever borrow them.
* my late father's HP11c. In the early 2000s, he quipped that the set of
batteries he'd just put in would outlive him. Sadly, he was right: Dad
passed last December, and I had to change the batteries last week.
* a TI-83+. I got this to put DrugWars on and do some Z80 programming,
but the serial link refuses to be useful under Linux
* a couple of Casio fx-115 variants. One of them - an fx-115MS - is a
great device for simple electronic engineering. It handles SI magnitudes
properly and logically. The other fx-115 I have doesn't do this.
* a Sharp "Compet" desktop calculator from 1969. It has lovely nixie
tubes for the display. While it looks like a basic 4-function unit, it
will do square roots somewhat slowly.
Stewart
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