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Articles or book(s) about the functions behind a scientific calculator
10-20-2017, 06:53 PM (This post was last modified: 10-20-2017 06:55 PM by pier4r.)
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Articles or book(s) about the functions behind a scientific calculator
Since I am packing some information in the hp calc torrent I started to read more properly some of the contents (not only skimming them).

The article about the SOLVE function of the 34C is really neat ( hp journal 1980.08). From this article, aside from computing the following

\( \int_{0}^{1} \frac{du}{1 - u^{64}} \)

( that is taking ages on the sharp el506w, with n=10000 so a single step is [1-0]/10000 . I want to compare it with the 200 seconds mentioned for the 34C );
I was saying, aside from computing the formula above, a question popped in my head: whether do articles or books that explains the algorithms behind an entire scientific calculator exists. (a scientific calculator is enough, a graphing/programmable may be overkill)

I know that one could connect the math theory of functions to those actually implemented in a scientific calculator, plus numerical algorithms are explained somewhere in some journals.
Nevertheless the choices about the math functions to pack in a calculator, with limited resources, may contain subtle and neat observations that would be interesting to know. Exactly like the article in the mentioned hp journal.

I am asking about a book because the source code of the algorithms may be not that readable, unless there are plenty of comments.
Furthermore if the source coude would be enough, I am not sure about the code of Hp, casio, sharp, ti scientific calculators; but the wp31 or wp34 would help I guess, since their code is open as far as I know.

Wikis are great, Contribute :)
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Articles or book(s) about the functions behind a scientific calculator - pier4r - 10-20-2017 06:53 PM



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