Casio Calculator Query

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Apologies if this is in the wrong section!

Anyone here have a Casio fx-83ES Scientific Calculator, and can tell me this, please?

How to set it to give answers in ordinary decimals.

Despite down-loading the manual and trying everything it suggests (except the one I want ‘cos it’s not there), plus viewing one or two videos, I could not change it from displaying answers in vulgar-fractions to decimals.

 

It is stuck obstinately in vulgar fraction mode, but in the past it did show decimals. I probably mis-keyed something, giving it a peculiar control code.

Even decimal inputs give fraction outputs:

3.142 X 3 X 3 = 14139/500.

Type that in as an ordinary division, and it shows the same improper fraction.

While [square-root sign]10 merely returns exactly that. Not 3-point-thingummyjig.

I.e.  The answer to √(10) is displayed as √(10).  (I wasn’t sure if this forum can display a mathematical sign.)

Err…. Not very helpful.

 

Does anyone know how to switch it to decimal answers, please?

 

(The computer has its own scientific calculator, but I sometimes need do the sums away from the confuser.)

 

[Ches Green UKParticipant @chesgreenuk]

Nigel, Is this any good?…. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z_V4CAVo4nI ….40 secs long.

There is a Mute button top left.

 

I have the solar version fx-83MS….it has lasted for donkey’s years.

Ches

 

[Peter Cook 6Participant @petercook6]

There is an answer to the same query here

They suggest “Change “MathIO” to “LineIO” by pressing the buttons [ SHIFT ] followed by [ MODE ] and then the number [ 2 ] for “LineIO”.”

[ChrisLHParticipant @chrislh]

And why don’t they tell us this in the instruction book ? Choice of fractions as the default is about as potty as Excel spreadsheet’s choice of radians as their everyday angle measurement !

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Thank you Chris, Peter.

Sorted now. It gives the result in exponential form (N X 10^x ) but at least it’s a decimal of sorts.

This seems to fox a lot of people!

I must have accidentally pressed that S<>D key at some point without realising it; but it is strange that if the Casio manual is to be believed, vulgar fractions are the default setting.

I think that video is one I looked at.

++++

 

If I recall correctly this is the calculator that I bought ooh, last Century probably, when my original one went missing. I wanted it one evening for some awkward calculation or other, could not find it anywhere. Tried to find my slide-rule… that was AWOL too. I managed to complete the task using logarithms, after a bit of revision, and bought the Casio the very next day. A few weeks later, searching for something else, I opened a drawer and there was the original calculator, staring up at me as if to say, “Well, you must have put me in here!”

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi. I have three of these types, an fx-83MS, which is the first one I bought many many years ago, and a fx-85ES and a fx-83gt plus. They all have this feature of giving the answer as a vulgar fraction, unless you select the mode correctly, which I often forget to do, which is quite annoying at times, but they are good calculators though.

Regards Nick.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Chris – 

‘Excel’ is even worse than its odd choice of the radian by default. Although that is the “Preferred” SI unit to suit mathematicians and bureaucrats. Is it also easier to programme angle calculators in radians?

My work frequently involved making polar plots, which µSoft calls “radar charts”, of amplitude v. angle. Typically the increments, always in Degrees, were 3º. (Cor, I can remember those symbols’ ALT+number keys!)

Excel lets you edit a Cartesian graph, even with as many as 120 values, to sensible legibility while using all data.

There is or was no sensible editing menu for the polar ones though. So they took laborious data-table editing to prevent the peripheral labels being a circular splodge of over-written numbers round something resembling a fine sieve.

Even dafter, no-one in Seattle knew that in geometry 360 = 0, so the finished plot went “0, 3, 6, … 355, 357, 360, 0”. Two separate points. One of my superiors suggested you need consider an ‘Excel’ polar graph as just a rectangular one rolled round.

Just as well the company does not make rotary-tables.

 

+++++

An unexpected aspect of buying the Casio was its size.

I have become used to calculators shrinking so even the scientific calculators became almost compact enough for a shirt pocket. When I bought the replacement, all those in the shop, scientific or purely arithmetical, had grown, to more like wax-jacket pocket volume. It does make it easier to use, but the increase in bulk while other instruments were being made smaller, did surprise me.

[gerry maddenParticipant @gerrymadden53711]

Nigel, ‘radians’ are not just for ‘mathematicians and bureaucrats’.

Just look in bearing manufactures catalogues for permisable misalignments of bearings. Radians are used here also. For example, the figure for single row ball bearings is typically given as 0.001 radians. You might think that’s unhelpful but it’s actually not, because this equates to 1 thou over an inch or, in metric 1mm over a metre.

Gerry

[JAParticipant @ja]

I have two such Casio calculators. I have never liked any calculators but have tolerated them since the arrival of the reverse Polish notation HP models.

Three years ago I found my old slide rule. Great! Quicker than any calculator where you are pushing buttons, three significant figures is usually adequate and the memory always works. The only thing it does not do is add and subtract. I have now bought a second for the workshop, the original is in the office.

JA

[Martin ConnellyParticipant @martinconnelly55370]

Where I worked we set electronic inclinometers to millirads for levelling large fabrications. It was easy to work out the shims to lift or lower a support point since one millirad is 1mm per 1m.For example 5 millirads on a datum surface and the support point 5 metres away equals lift it (or lower it) 25mm.

Martin C

[Author]

Posts