WP 34S and 31S bugs and fixes

[Nigel (UK)]

(01-18-2015 09:59 PM)walter b Wrote:  I didn't say it's a bad idea. But a good tool is one containing what's necessary (in a nice package) and nothing else. I don't see a need for EEX in fraction mode, also I don't see a benefit of EEX there - what you (want to) do with fraction mode is close to abuse IMHO.

If I had foreseen this discussion, I'd probably voted against fraction mode at all. Too late

d:-I

I'm sorry. I do sympathise: my students at school pretty much all use the Casio FX-83/5 series of calculators, set to Math input/output display format. The division key doesn't get used: they use fractions for all division calculations, being as happy to type in 1e-10 for a numerator and 3e8 as a denominator as they are to type in 4/3. (In fact, I think that a good number of them do not know that 4/3 means 4 divided by 3.) I guess that I feel the same way about this as you do about the proposed (mis-)use of the WP-34S fraction mode. However ...

I understand that any change to the user interface of the WP-34S is more likely to be harmful than neutral or beneficial. But I think that letting EEX terminate fraction mode is a rare exception to this rule. When I look at (4/3) pi r^3 I see the 4/3 as a fraction, like the (1/2) in the expression for kinetic energy. I can of course just do the divisions, but I do not see it as an abuse of fraction mode to multiply a fraction by a real number to obtain a real result. Even if you do not share this view I hope you can see the reasoning behind it.

Nigel (UK)