[X4U] Tiger's Calculator.app no longer does percentages?

[T.L. Miller]

On 11/27/05, at 8:55 AM, net kat netkat at comcast.net said:

>yeah, except for the idea of "what's the % key there for?"

It depends on what the calculator's maker wants it to do. I guess in
4.04 all it does is save you from typing a decimal point. 15% of
anything is .15 X whatever. Perhaps it helps the many people have a hard
time with decimal points. A major Florida supermarket chain than pre-
Thanksgiving ads in newspapers showing turkey at ".57¢ per lb." I've
seen people who weren't using a % key type in, for example, ".20"
consistently when that zero was a wasted keystroke.

>if a calculator's % key does nothing more than return a percent of 1.0,
>then I would say it is useless except for those people who can't move
>the decimal point 2 places to the left.

Again, 15% means .15 of anything you apply it to. I almost never use %
keys -- maybe over the years I developed a lack of confidence in what
they did. 

>And, in the case of the Tiger calculator, that's all the % key seems TO
>do, whereas the Panther calculator returns the % value of the number
>already in the register...something infinitely more valuable, IMO.

Looks like each version of each calculator needs to be checked out
before you base major decisions on the results.


Tom Miller
..................................................
"The only time we see the middle of the road is as  
we run from side to side." R.O.Clark 
...................................................