Iterative calculation of exponent when not needed? - Printable Version +- HP Forums (https://www.hpmuseum.org/forum) +-- Forum: HP Calculators (and very old HP Computers) (/forum-3.html) +--- Forum: General Forum (/forum-4.html) +--- Thread: Iterative calculation of exponent when not needed? (/thread-20972.html) |
Iterative calculation of exponent when not needed? - Bill Duncan - 12-12-2023 06:15 AM While working on some probability calculations using "solve" on an HP-27S, I was curious why an iterative solution was used while using logs would be faster? The equation was simply something like this: Code: X = Y ^ Z Where I wanted to solve for Z. It chugged away displaying intermediate solutions while working it out. Why not simply.. Code: Z = log(X) / log(Y) I haven't tried it on my HP-48 yet. Would it resort to an iterative solution as well? What about TVM applications for solving for the number of periods? Iterative solutions? I haven't looked yet, but curious (and too late to investigate tonight).. RE: Iterative calculation of exponent when not needed? - brouhaha - 12-12-2023 06:43 AM Because the 27S only solves equations numerically. It doesn't have any symbolic algebra code. It's only a slightly fancier version of the 34C/15C/Advantage solver. RE: Iterative calculation of exponent when not needed? - ijabbott - 12-13-2023 08:13 AM (12-12-2023 06:43 AM)brouhaha Wrote: Because the 27S only solves equations numerically. It doesn't have any symbolic algebra code. It's only a slightly fancier version of the 34C/15C/Advantage solver. It can do a little bit of rearrangement to solve directly, but nothing fancy like applying logs! |