Help Activity refresh/Chapter/Calculate

About Calculate

Version 37, 2007

Where to get Calculate

Download Version 39 of Calculate.

Using Calculate

The Toolbars

For those who have used a scientific calculator, most of the functions of Calculate will be quite familiar.

The Toolbars are

• Activity, Calculate icon: Name session, collaborate

• Edit, scissors icon: Copy, Paste

• Functions, {x}: Square, square root, reciprocal, exponential, power, logarithm, factorial

• Trigonometry, triangle icon: sin, cos, tan, sin^-1, cos^-1, tan^-1, sinh, cosh, tanh

• Boolean, Venn diagram icon: and, or, =, !=

• Constants, Greek letters icon: pi, e, gamma, phi

• Plot: Hover menu offers Help

• Degrees/Radian angle measure

• Scientific/Engineering notation

• Number of digits to show: 6, 9, 12, 15

• Base: Decimal, binary, octal, hex

• Exit

The Help menu option for plot enters the command

help(plot)

on the text entry line. The image above shows this and its result, along with the general help function

help()

The list of help topics is available with the command

help(index)

including topics not supported on the menus. Help is not provided for the constants pi, e, gamma (Euler-Mascheroni Constant, and phi (Golden Ratio), but these can be looked up on the Internet. Clicking their icons inserts their numeric values.