The MODES view
Numeric formats
The
MODES
view (see right) controls the numeric format used in
displaying numbers and angles in aplets. At the bottom of the screen
you will see that one of the screen keys has been given the function
. Pressing this key pops up a menu of choices from which you
can select the option which suits you. The default angle setting is
radians.
Calculator Tip
,
+
If you don’t want to use the menu then, rather than pressing
highlight the field and then press the ‘ ’ key repeatedly. This will cycle
through the choices without popping up a menu. This can be much
faster if the menu has only a few choices.
The choices for ‘
Number format
’ are shown on the right.
Standard
is
probably the best choice in most cases, although it can be a little
annoying to constantly have 12 significant figures displayed. In
Standard
mode, very large and very small numbers are displayed in
scientific notation.
The
Fixed
,
Scientific
and
Engineering
formats all require you to
specify how many decimal places to display. The screenshot right shows
Fixed 4
, which rounds everything off to 4 decimal places. Of course,
you can change the
4
to any other number you want.
A setting of
Scientific
ensures that any results are displayed in scientific notation. Of course, the
calculator’s idea of scientific notation may not be the same as yours. Since the calculator has no way of
displaying powers as superscripts, a result of
3 203
×
10
4
has to be displayed as
3.203E4
. The alternative of
⋅
3
Engineering
is very similar to
Scientific
, except that powers are displayed as multiples of 3 (ie.
10 ,10
6
).
This is done to allow easy conversion in the metric system, which also works in multiples of 1000.
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