How it works?

[Diana I. Ramirez]

Hi, actually I am working in my final project of numerical analisys and the theme of it, is Calculator Arithmetic. I need to know how calculators make operations inside and how calculators handle errors in operations. If you can help me with this please contact me, cause I can't find any information. Thanks.

[Namir]

Hello Diana,

What level of operations are you interested in. Some of the old books on algorithms and calculators that came out in the late 70s and early 80s discuss some of these methods and how approximations are used to evalute log and trig functions. Is that what you are looking for?

Namir

[John Limpert]

Most calculators use decimal (BCD) arithmetic. See http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/ for a great resource on this subject. CORDIC algorithms are commonly used for transcendental functions. Googling for CORDIC should get you started.

[Namir]

check the following book (on Amazon)

Numerical Computation 1: Methods, Software, and Analysis (Numerical Computation 1 Vol. XVI)
by Christoph W. Ueberhuber