pedz@bigben.mpd.tandem.com (Perry Smith) (08/31/90)
This will probably sound like a complaint but it is not intended to be on. I played with the algebra stuff a little one weekend. I'm talking about the mode where you can flip terms, distribute, merge, associate, etc. I found it cute but mostly unusable. One problem is that I didn't figure out how to get the calculator to reduce obvious things on its own. e.g. 1*X or 0+X or 1^-1*X to be just X. It seems (I stress the term "seems" because I only played with it for a few hours) that with 1*X you have to flip it to be X*1 before you can do the /1 thing and make it just X. Also, the speed is far too slow for my tastes. I was toying with the time value of money equation which is non-trivial but not extremely complex and it took a half minute or so for each transformation. I think most of this was the re-draw of the equation. (I was doing this from the equation writer. Maybe that was my first mistake.) The types of equations I would actually use this on is things which are too complex for me to deal with on paper. TVM represents about 1/2 or 1/5 of the complexity of a typical equation that I don't feel happy with working on it on paper. I was wondering if anyone else has played with this and what their thoughts are. Can someone point out some tricks that are not obvious to me? Like I said, it looks cute and I wish it were useful but it just doesn't seem to be. (I'm hoping its just me.) pedz