QAMA calculator

[Ingo]

Has anyone here tried this calculator out: http://qamacalculator.com ?

Besides the very instructive concept of estimating the result first, is the hardware (keyboard, etc.) worth the money?

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(07-01-2014 08:48 PM)Ingo Wrote:  Has anyone here tried this calculator out: http://qamacalculator.com ?

Besides the very instructive concept of estimating the result first, is the hardware (keyboard, etc.) worth the money?

Yes someone did.

[Don Shepherd]

(07-01-2014 08:55 PM)Massimo Gnerucci Wrote:  

(07-01-2014 08:48 PM)Ingo Wrote:  Has anyone here tried this calculator out: http://qamacalculator.com ?

Besides the very instructive concept of estimating the result first, is the hardware (keyboard, etc.) worth the money?

Yes someone did.

Yeah, in that link I mentioned that the guy was sending me another unit that would hopefully solve the keyboard response problem. He did and it did, the keyboard on the new one seemed to work fine.

Both have been sitting in my closet for about 2 years now. If anyone would like either of them, send me a private message.

[Nigel (UK)]

(07-23-2014 11:22 PM)Geir Isene Wrote:  After catching this thread, I went on to order the Qama. It arrived a couple of days ago, and I must say I am impressed. Me and my fiancé went all geeky that night competing for the best guess for various complexity of equations. It should serve as an excellent tool for my 10-year old son who's very much into mathematics. Thanks for bringing this to my attention :-)

Me too - mine arrived yesterday. It really is enormous fun - can you estimate (cos70)^30 well enough to satisfy it? For such a cheap machine ($20 plus delivery) the standard of the hardware is excellent. I'm particularly impressed by the keyboard - nice spring-loaded buttons with a "Casio" feel to them. They don't click but you can tell you've pressed them, and they always register exactly once. It's good to see that such nice keyboards can be manufactured relatively cheaply. The display is clear, too.

Nigel (UK)

[Paul Dale]

(09-03-2014 09:21 AM)Nigel (UK) Wrote:  It really is enormous fun - can you estimate (cos70)^30 well enough to satisfy it?

Something rather close to zero? How close does it need to be to be accepted.


Pauli

[Nigel (UK)]

(09-03-2014 09:51 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  

(09-03-2014 09:21 AM)Nigel (UK) Wrote:  It really is enormous fun - can you estimate (cos70)^30 well enough to satisfy it?

Something rather close to zero? How close does it need to be to be accepted.


Pauli

It depends how complex the calculation is. For (cos70)^30 its tolerance is very wide (although my estimate of 10^-15 was close to the true answer of 1.05e-14!). It took me longer than it should have done to get close to e^60, though. Its tolerance there was only a couple of powers of 10 (10^25 to 10^27). For 2+2 it only accepts 4.

[Ilansamson]

Sorry about the delay:

For a fraction (e.g. cos) raised to a very high power QAMA would accept 0