How do you calculate?

[Micha]

On 20/05/10 17:24, Dov Grobgeld wrote:
> Regarding doing approximate answers in the head, it doesn't always work
> as is told in an anecdote
> of the books about the late physists Richard Feynmann. It tells the
> story of how he used to brag that any arithmetic problem that could be
> stated in in ten seconds he could give an approximate answer up to 10%
> to in 30seconds. This all worked out for a while until someone said to him
>
> sine of a million
>
> which managed to shut up even Richard Feynmann.

I won't be as arrogant as Richard Feynmann, but I can give the correct answer 
plus/minus one ;-)

Personally for simple calculations I use gcalctool (bound to win+c) or google 
(turns out that it's also a calculator and a measurement converter ...)

>
> Cheers,
> Dov
>
> On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 16:41, shlomo bauer <shlomobauer at gmail.com
> <mailto:shlomobauer at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     Sammy is wondering (for years) how unix/linux users do simple
>     calculations.
>
>     Many people write their own calculator language - in the tradition of
>     hoc.  Anyone who actually
>     enters in the code for hoc will discover something quite interesting.
>
>     Other people use languages like Nickle (http://nickle.org/); I
>     typically use haskell and in the past, I used ocaml and further in the
>     past, I used sml - still my favorite.
>
>     Another approach is to use a spreadsheet.  You can compute recursive
>     functions using !.
>
>     My favorite,  for "simple" cacluations, is to compute an approximate
>     answer and to do so, I don't generally need anything except a sense of
>     the scale of the numbers.
>
>     Shlomo
>
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