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From: edp@jareth.enet.dec.com (Eric Postpischil (Always mount a scratch monkey.))
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Re: Two questions...
Message-ID: <15643@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 27 Sep 90 12:34:59 GMT
References: <1990Sep26.160424.12956@rick.cs.ubc.ca> <1990Sep24.183934.575@rick.cs.ubc.ca> <36159@cc.usu.edu>
Sender: newsdaemon@shlump.nac.dec.com
Reply-To: edp@jareth.enet.dec.com (Eric Postpischil (Always mount a scratch monkey.))
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 16

In article <1990Sep26.160424.12956@rick.cs.ubc.ca>, b3300876@rick.cs.ubc.ca
(george kai yee chow) writes:

>Yes, I'm aware of the problem of calculating with pi. But as I recall reading
>in the 48sx's manual, the symbol modes was suppose to elminate that. On the 
>48sx, you can ask to keep pi as a symbol to avoid the rounding error.

There's a limit to how far the calculator can go with symbolic manipulation. 
The calculator will preserve 'pi' as a symbolic in expressions.  When taking
sines or cosines, it will recognize pi and pi/2 and return exact results.  In
other cases, it does not have exact results prepared for fractions of pi.  So,
to complete the calculation and return a number, it must convert the symbolic
'pi' to a number and perform numeric calculations.


				-- edp