Basic Calculator

Arithmetic Operations using AddUp 2

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Basic arithmetic operations with AddUp are done by entering numbers and operators to form the expression to evaluate. The expression can be typed in and edited at will, then pressing the Enter key causes it to be evaluated. There is no need to use buttons with this calculator, everything that needs to be evaluated can be entered directly in the work area. Of course a basic button keypad is available for those who prefer, and it can be turned on and off at will.

The basic arithmetic operators are:

Other frequently-used operators are:

Parentheses can also be used to nest sub-expressions and dictate a specific order of evaluation for any arithmetic expression.

A less frequently used operator is the factorial operator. It is used after a value and only applies to this one value (the same way as the percent operator). It gives the factorial value of a positive whole number, which is the product of all whole numbers from 1 to this value. For example 3! equals 1 * 2 * 3 = 6, and 5! equals 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 = 120. The factorial value of 0 is defined as 1.

The format of all numbers can include some groups separators. These are used to group a few digits together in order to make a large value more readable. By default this separator is the comma. (The respective roles of the comma and of the decimal point can be interchanged for countries that use the reverse notation.) The group separator is provided for esthetic purposes only: it has no effect on the value of numbers.

Even with a basic calculator, numbers sometimes become either too large or too small to be represented using a manageable number of digits. In such cases the so-called "scientific notation" is used. Numbers with many digits are abbreviated into a format that implies a multiplication by a certain power of 10. For example the value of 12,345,678 multiplied by 90,123,456 is 1,112,635,168,023,168 which contains more digits than most people need. In many cases an approximation of this value is sufficient and we are interested in the magnitude of the value more than the few final digits. We note that this value is close to 1.113 multiplied by 1,000,000,000,000,000. The value 1.113 and the multiplicative factor or magnitude of the value (10 to the power of 15) is usually the type of information that is of interest when dealing with extreme numbers.

Large numbers like this can be represented by the shorter notation "1.113e+15" instead, where the letter 'e' is an exponent marker and the value of "+15" represents the number of digits that follow the value that appears to the left of the decimal point. This is the same as saying 1.113 multiplied by 10 raised to the power of 15. In this representation, the fractional part gives the rounded value of the truncated digits. If the value that follows the 'e' marker is negative, then instead of having a multiplication by the given factor we have a division. In this case the number represents a very small value instead of a very large one.

As a final note, the semi-colon is available to separate values in a list of numbers or of sub-expressions. This is not an operator but a punctuation mark that is most commonly seen within lists of function parameters. The use of functions is somewhat beyond the topic of this section but here is a quick example of its use with the "add" and "sub" functions that perform the same role as the '+' and '-' operators.