Comparison To Computation
Calculate comes from the Greek word Κάχληκα or gravel in English because Greeks used gravel for counting. In English, calculation involves numbers and the word usually connotes a simple process, but computation may be done by applying specific rules, with or without numbers, and the word is chosen for more complex tasks.
Calculation is a prerequisite for computation. The difference in the meaning of calculation and computation appears to originate from the late medieval period.
Read more about this topic: Calculation
Famous quotes containing the words comparison to, comparison and/or computation:
“In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
—Irving Kristol (b. 1920)
“I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.... The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I suppose that Paderewski can play superbly, if not quite at his best, while his thoughts wander to the other end of the world, or possibly busy themselves with a computation of the receipts as he gazes out across the auditorium. I know a great actor, a master technician, can let his thoughts play truant from the scene ...”
—Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865–1932)