How about a pen that calculates...

[Egan Ford]

With all this talk about pocket calcs, new sci calcs, etc..., why not something completely different?

Watch the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Bf0XAf8_mLI

If this pen can play Tic-Tac-Toe and Zork, I have to believe that some here could make it a very compelling and very capable calculator.

[Ren]

I thought about a smart pen decades ago.
Only I thought it needed a 2 axis rotary encoder to follow the
movement of the ball point. The Livescribe uses a built in camera and special paper. Do others use accellerometers?

Of course, decades ago neither the technology nor my level of knowledge were sufficiently advanced. Nowadays the technology is there...

Ren

dona nobis pacem

[Bill (Smithville, NJ)]

Egan,

I had one of the Live Scribe pens and it was pretty amazing - just a lttle bit too fat. It comes with a couple of cards that have a calculator printed on it (4 banger calculator & a scientific calculator) which you could tap out the keys with the pen and get the calculated results. Worked okay - but a real calculator is easier/quicker to use.

Bill

[Egan Ford]

I was thinking along the lines of a more natural calculator, e.g. draw matrices, equations, etc... If TTT can be done, so can a matrix.

[Bill (Smithville, NJ)]

I seem to remember that I could write a simple equation out such as

4 + 5 =

and it would give the answer.

I know you can draw the piano keys out and then play the piano. They do have some sort of applaction development kit that will let you create what they call PenApps. So it should be possible to do something similar for a calculator.

Bill

[Steve S]

MathJournal is an application that runs on a tablet and will solve many classes of handwritten math. It will also generate plots.

www.xThink.com