Thanks for the tip! Interestingly, I found it weird how the app handles order-of-operations.

That is, if you type 1 + 2 / 2, the answer shows up as 2 and the paper tape shows

  1 + 2 / 2
  = 2

However, if you type 1 + 2 = / 2 (that is, you type equals after the 1 + 2, which will show 3 on the screen, before typing the / 2 part), the last line of the paper type shows

  1 + 2 / 2
  = 1.5

They need to add some parentheses in there.

It's the accepted order of operation in maths that you resolve multiplication and division before addition and subtraction.

While the single-value-view of a calculator removes visual context, if you are banging out multi-step calculations as a power user not having the standard order of operations would be odd.

The workaround, as you say, is to just press enter (equals) after each required subtotal. This is pretty semantically clear, that is - if you consider a traditional keyboard to even be a thing that young people are familiar with - and that is getting arguable!

Key corollary issues to the single-value-view nature of computer calculators are that they pull a lot of (now obtuse) cultural context from physical calculators plus regular mathematical context, none of which is obvious to occasional computer calculator software users.

It's probably high time this stuff was rejigged. Thanks for the paper tape tip!

To be clear, I'm not arguing that the results from the calculator are wrong, and I totally agree that how it handles order-of-operations is correct.

What I am arguing is that the visual display in the "Paper Tape" view is wrong because it displays different answers for the same values.

Oh sorry totally missed that 5AM here :)

Their stated issue is that pressing enter after the 'subtotal' is not clear because it shows as `1 + 2 / 2` in the history instead of `(1 + 2) / 2`.

or a /n

Android's calculator also has the history, invoked by pulling down on the display part. (Perhaps obvious to everybody here, but after the discussion on how the memory function is unclear to people, I'm not so sure.) Also that history is saved between launches, which happens to be extra useful for me.

No, I've been using the Android calculator for years and never realized that it could do that. This is the problem with "clever" UX...

I never clued in to the fact that the little bar below the calculator screen meant that you could pull it down to show history either.

Coincidentally, history is also available via the three-dots menu =)

Speaking of cryptic UX, though that one at least is standardized nonsense.

Thanks to this post, I played with the history and discovered that if you tap an expression in your history, it becomes the current expression.

Oh, that is useful.

Now if only I could calculate the log of something by pressing 'log' that would be nice.

I think that my Android phone (a Chinese model with Android 11 Go) has the Android calculator, which IIRC was based on the old SGI Irix calculator.

If to the right of the 4 basic operators +, -, ×, ÷ you have a vertical strip (greenish in my case), you can slide it to the left and have access to various other operators/functions, including log.

Being based on the old SGI calculator, you can also slide any result to the left to get as many digits after the decimal point as you like.

e.g. slide in the extra ops, press π, then start sliding the 3.1415… result.

I think the guy was saying that you have to surround an expression with ‘log()’ to get the logarithm—which is inconvenient when it's a result of previous calculations and you have to shuffle the cursor around. Can't just slap ‘log’ and have the current expressions logarithmized.

However, seeing as the calculator allows writing expressions with multiple operations, just shoving everything on the screen into ‘log()’ would be unreasonable, as one might want to provide the exact place for the logarithm themselves—so I guess the app does the most reasonable thing it can.

History is nice. I do wish it had the memory buttons.

You can just select and copy, and then paste. The whole expression is editable as a line of text.

Woah, thanks! This is an awesome feature I never would have found on my own

Qalculate as such a feature and is my preferred calculator app :)

Thanks! This is handy.