The Deviant wrote:
On Wed, 6 Nov 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
At 2:44 PM -0800 11/5/96, Sean Roach wrote:
If I remember my history right, the order that math was done often depended on the model of calculator it was done on. I remember being warned as late as 1991 how some calculators may still still add before they multiply, and to use those parenthesis for good measure, just to be safe.
Well, it ain't _history_ only--it's also current. Some of us use RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) calculators exclusively. (Even my screen calculator I use on my Mac is an RPN one.)
Yes, many calculators still have the add/multiply error also. Most of the newer generation (the one which I wish I didn't have to be a part of) doesn't know what RPN is, much less how to use it.
A friend of mine found his father's RPN HP (don't know which model) from college a week or two ago, and you'd never beleive how long it took me to convince him that "RPN" really does stand for "Reverse Polish Notation". As for slide rules, I think I'm the only person at my school who knows what a slide rule _is_, much less how to use one ;)
According to HP, the "Polish" part of the term comes from a Polish mathematician whose name (I can't spell it, and I don't have the .DOC) is pronounced phonetically: WOOCASHEVITZ. The "reverse" part apparently means the inventor specified the operation before the parameters, instead of how HP implemented it.