Calculator Input Methods

Calculator Input Methods

There are various ways in which a calculator might interpret key strokes.

One can categorize calculators into two main types: 1) single-step or immediate execution calculators and 2) expression or formula calculators.

On a formula calculator one types in an expression and then presses 'Enter' to evaluate the expression. There are various systems for typing in an expression: infix, postfix, natural display etc.

On an immediate execution calculator, the user presses a key for each operation, by pressing keys to calculate all the intermediate results, before the final value is shown.

Read more about Calculator Input Methods:  Immediate Execution, Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) (postfix Notation), Infix Notation, Tenkey Notation (adding Machine), Mathematical Display

Famous quotes containing the words calculator, input and/or methods:

    “Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being “somebody,” to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. One can either see or be seen.”
    —John Updike (b. 1932)

    “The comparison between Coleridge and Johnson is obvious in so far as each held sway chiefly by the power of his tongue. The difference between their methods is so marked that it is tempting, but also unnecessary, to judge one to be inferior to the other. Johnson was robust, combative, and concrete; Coleridge was the opposite. The contrast was perhaps in his mind when he said of Johnson: “his bow-wow manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced.””
    —Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)