[Kraetos]

I need a better calculator for my Mac. I've tried a lot and none of them leave me feeling satisfied.

Also, despite the "graphing" moniker in the thread title, graphing functionality is not needed. What I want is a calculator that lets me input entire equations instead of doing one operation at a time. (No, I'm not willing to learn RPN right now, but if enough of you say it's is a good idea I'll put it on my never-ending "to learn" list; I can't imagine it would require much mental effort, just practice.)

Most calculators don't offer this, including the built in calculator or PCalc. (PCalc theoretically lets you input long equations complete with parenthesis before evaluating, but this hurts more than it helps since you cant actually see the equation you're inputting as you go)

Mathematica can do this, but that feels like using a chainsaw to snip yarn... and I haven't upgraded to 6 (which brought universal binaries) yet so it's dog slow on my MacBook Air. I found a program called "Magic Number Machine" but the interface is a little clunky and it tends to hang on some operations. I needed to calculate an arctan today, but MMM hangs on all of the inverse trig functions.

So... does anyone know of Mac calculator software that lets you input entire equations (e.g. I could type in 3*arctan(2)/60 in one line rather than having to calculate arctan(2), then multiply by 3, then divide by 60) before evaluating them? Or even a Windows program I could run through Crossover?

My search is hindered by the fact that I don't know what this type of calculator would be called. Every calculator I've seen that can do this is called a "graphing calculator" but searching for "graphing calculator" brings up actual graphing calculators. I'm looking for one line input, that's it. Mathematica and Grapher do what I need as far as graphing functionality goes.

[tomoe]

Matlab ($99 for student version), or its freeware bastard cousin Octave, both let you input entire equations on a single line.

[BlueRabbit]

I use R for this sort of stuff. It's a free programming language for statistics, but you can use it for one-line calculations. I think the R function for doing arctans is atan(x).

[colivigan]

For a minute, I thought this thread might be about the original Graphing Calculator.

One of my favorite Apple stories.

Not much help, I know. Too bad they don't include it with the OS any more.

[tomoe]

Originally Posted by Kraetos So... does anyone know of Mac calculator software that lets you input entire equations (e.g. I could type in 3*arctan(2)/60 in one line rather than having to calculate arctan(2), then multiply by 3, then divide by 60) before evaluating them?

If it is just trig functions like arctan, etc., I just tried entering the example you provided into Spotlight as a single line (using atan rather than arctan) and it calculated it as ~0.055. Perhaps you don't need anything else.

[nikstar101]

Originally Posted by colivigan For a minute, I thought this thread might be about the original Graphing Calculator. One of my favorite Apple stories. Not much help, I know. Too bad they don't include it with the OS any more.

Grapher in the utilities folder is pretty much the same isn't it?