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I am trying to display results always with exponents in scientific notation.

citre324
4-Participant

I am trying to display results always with exponents in scientific notation.

I am using Mathcad Prime Release 7.0 and Datecode7.0.0.0

Mathcad Prime 7.0 can show results in scientific notation, but if exponent is zero, the exponent is skipped.
Is it possible to display always the exponent as Mathcad 15 can?

10 REPLIES 10
HS_10206423
5-Regular Member
(To:citre324)

citre324
4-Participant
(To:HS_10206423)

Thank you for the reply.

This topic was kind of beneficial to me. The most ideal way of displaying is FORTRAN-style exponential.

StuartBruff
23-Emerald III
(To:citre324)


@citre324 wrote:

I am using Mathcad Prime Release 7.0 and Datecode7.0.0.0

Mathcad Prime 7.0 can show results in scientific notation, but if exponent is zero, the exponent is skipped.
Is it possible to display always the exponent as Mathcad 15 can?


If there is a way, it's not obvious (to me).

 

Indeed, it looks like such a display may be a bug.

 

https://support.ptc.com/help/mathcad/r8.0/en/#page/PTC_Mathcad_Help/to_format_the_result_display.html

 

(Scientific)—Results are always in exponential notation.
12461.7556 = 1.246 × 10^4

 Stuart

citre324
4-Participant
(To:StuartBruff)

I can only think so too.

MichaelW
17-Peridot
(To:citre324)

No, this is obviously working as designed:

Mathcad 15 scientific notation:        1=1E+000   10=1E+001   100=1E+002   1000=1E+003

Mathcad Prime scientific notation: 1=1                  10=1*10          100=1*10²        1000=1*10³

 

One can refer to Product Ideas @ PTC Community and consider posting a new one. 

StuartBruff
23-Emerald III
(To:MichaelW)


@MichaelW wrote:

No, this is obviously working as designed:

Mathcad 15 scientific notation:        1=1E+000   10=1E+001   100=1E+002   1000=1E+003

Mathcad Prime scientific notation: 1=1                  10=1*10          100=1*10²        1000=1*10³

 

One can refer to Product Ideas @ PTC Community and consider posting a new one. 


It may be working as designed, but it doesn't meet the customer-documented behaviour.   Extrapolating the M15 notation and your Prime notation from 1000..10 then 1*10⁰ is, IMO, a more obvious display for scientific notation and is in keeping with previous Mathcad (15) behaviour.  

 

OOIC, I've just entered 1 into Wolfram Alpha (asking for scientific notation output) and an HP15C emulation on my iPhone and they both show the zero exponent.  Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_notation.  

 

Perhaps it's better reported as a bug rather than a new idea?

 

Stuart

@stuart

sure it's legitimate to ask PTC R&D for an explanation - or if not justified - to fix it (as a bug).

But the requested behavior sounds more like a change or extension of the current product specification. Which is very well justified (and voted!) with a new idea (there is no yet in the community).

However, if you want to report this as a bug and have permission to do so, please open a new case with PTC Technical Support.

Thank you for your understanding.

StuartBruff
23-Emerald III
(To:MichaelW)


@MichaelW wrote:

@stuart

sure it's legitimate to ask PTC R&D for an explanation - or if not justified - to fix it (as a bug).

But the requested behavior sounds more like a change or extension of the current product specification. Which is very well justified (and voted!) with a new idea (there is no yet in the community).

However, if you want to report this as a bug and have permission to do so, please open a new case with PTC Technical Support.

Thank you for your understanding.


Thanks for the reply.  Without having sight of the requirement specification, I obviously can't tell whether it is indeed part of the spec.  Nor can I know whether it was a deliberate change or something that slipped through the net.   As noted, the result does not agree with the documented user behaviour, so either the documentation needs fixing, or the formatting code does.   

 

It may be that the non Scientific Notation is preferred by some people (I've seen it elsewhere), but the power of 10 notation is definitely preferred by others and was the Mathcad 15 behaviour. However, as it stands, those who prefer "1" to "1·10⁰, can choose the "General" format; those who prefer Scientific Notation have no such alternative. There should at least be the option to choose the cutoff power, IMO.

 

Unfortunately, I don't have permission to add or comment on Ideas. 

 

Stuart

To the best of my knowledge it was done deliberately just because

MSheykman_0-1653478584032.png

We can consider having and additional result format setting like "show zero exponent" similar to "show trailing zeros" that will affect this behavior.

Meanwhile you can just type 10^0 in scaling expression, but it needs to be done in each individual expression, there is no way to do it on document level.

I am not convinced that current behavior contradicts the documentation because documentation does not explicitly mention the case of zero in exponent. 

LucMeekes
23-Emerald III
(To:MSheykman)

There is no need for the documentation to explicitly mention the case of zero (or one), simply because the documentation states 'Results are always in exponential notation.'

And always leaves no room for exceptions, unless they are explicitly mentioned.

 

Luc

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