With 4 replies after 45 hours, this tread has fallen well short of my expectations. I’ve seem a more spirited response to the “what’s you favorite calculator” at a
croquette tournament! (yes, an actual croquette tournament)
I’ll make a desperate attempt to salvage it. Alternate topic:
What are the features of the perfect calculator? Does such a calculator exist?
Here’s my short list of features
- Arbitrary precision. Number of significant digits limited only by available memory, and Gibibytes of that.
- Lots of forms of numeric representation: exact integer, rational, real and complex numbers in terms of rationals to rational powers and as many of the important transcendental numbers as possible.
- Flabbergasting speed. Likely achieved through some sort of massively parallel architecture along the lines of a Raw chip array
- A Self contained, portable, USB device. A small display, keyboard, and battery, but stick it into a USB port and have a pretty application interface, as well as enabling high-number-crunching applications that support it.
And my short answer to “does it exist?”:
I’m pretty sure not yet.
