1-Visitor

Question

'Scientific notation'

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
January 4, 2012
5 replies
30781 views

I couldn't believe it when I saw that MathCad expects you to actually use the clumsy notation 10^x, four wasteful key strokes, when FORTRAN has been using the simple 'E' notation for 60 years.

Is there anyway I can get MathCad to accept the 5.5E22 style instead of the stupidly slavish 10^x?

How many man-years of typing have MathCad users had to waste by now?

Other

V

VladimirN

24-Ruby III

Bill,

Double click on result and choose:

Or you can set the default settings before you start work in the Mathcad worksheet. In main Mathcad menu select "Format" -> "Result":

F

Fred_Kohlhepp

23-Emerald I

Note that Vladimir's answer pertains to results. You may not type S:=5E6 and expect S to be 5000000.

V

VladimirN

24-Ruby III

Exactly. But we can use the following:

P

ptc-3016452

Author

1-Visitor

Wow! Thank you for this. I wish there was another way to find this out besides coming here and bothering all you gracious wise men.

V

VladimirN

24-Ruby III

You're welcome.

V

ValeryOchkov

24-Ruby IV

Bill Parkyn wrote:
I couldn't believe it when I saw that MathCad expects you to actually use the clumsy notation 10^x, four wasteful key strokes, when FORTRAN has been using the simple 'E' notation for 60 years.
Is there anyway I can get MathCad to accept the 5.5E22 style instead of the stupidly slavish 10^x?
How many man-years of typing have MathCad users had to waste by now?

We can use Eor e by an input numbers too:

P

ptc-5315066

1-Visitor

Agreed, no reason why Mathcad does not allow the 1E6 type entry. But.....

New+Picture.bmp

Have fun.

V

ValeryOchkov

24-Ruby IV

A Glaun wrote:
Agreed, no reason why Mathcad does not allow the 1E6 type entry. But.....
Have fun.

With prefix operator

W

Werner_E

25-Diamond I

Hmm, the main point of Bill's post 21 months ago was, that he accused the 10^x notation of being wasted keystrokes compared to the old Fortran notation. He counted 4 additional key strokes, in a later post he counted even 5. He counted the shift key as well but nevertheless in my count there are just three additional keystrokes necessary - I get the "^" without shift but have to use shift to get the "=", "(" and ")" - this may be different with other countries keyboard layouts.

Its a price am eagerly willing to pay for a more natural, mathematical, better readable notation.

Nevertheless I agree that Mathcad should support easy use of the Fortran notation, too - not only for output display but also for manual input.

As so far we now have (at least) 4 ways to type 5*10^20 using powers of ten. Comparing keystrokes, the standard way of doing is still the winner. Methods 3) and 4) additionally require the definition of e(x) and/or E(x) which leaves us w/o the Euler number :-(. Method 4) requires mouse action (I am not aware of a keyboard short for the selection of the präfix operator) and this sure would account for more than the two keystrokes I charged.

The truth is that Mathcad already allows the Fortran notation also for manual input! Its the automatic detection of an implicit multiplication which prevents us from using it. Try it yourself: Type 5e9, delete the multiplication between 5 and e which had appeared and type =. You get what was demanded. So I might add a fifth way of typing the expression but let me state clearly that I will stick with number 1, though.