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

[John Baltutis]

On 11/27/05, net kat <netkat at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> yeah..we get that concept. 0.15 of anything you apply it to, and you
> thereby prove our case: we are applying the % function TO 28.05, not
> to 1.0!
>
> what appears to be broken in the calculator is the understanding of
> what to DO with that fact in an algebraic expression.

That interpretation assumes that 28.05 + 15% implies 28.05 * (1 + 0.15).
Why? 15% is always 0.15 if you don't indicate "of something else"; whereas,
15% of x is always 0.15 * x. I didn't interpret the original problem, just
took it at its algebraic face-value. And, that's how I'd want my calculator
to work: explicit, not implicit. BTW, what would you expect as an answer
for: 15% + 28.05? AFAIK, a+b = b+a. If your calculator didn't pass that
test, would you say it wasn't broken?

>
> I guess there are 2 sides here, and "our" side feels that to say
> "28.05+15% = 28.2" is sheer idiocy from any angle, the flaw being
> that Calculator either merely converts the number 15 to a decimal
> percent equivalent, OR Calculator assumes that you want to add 15% of
> 1.0.
>
> Either case is logically incorrect. Again, we are not disputing that
> 15% of 1 is 0.15.
>
> I'm old enough to remember a time when it was a huge selling point
> for a calculator to have Algebraic logic built-in. Without that,
> you're stuck with busting out the hierarchy of operations,
> calculating each result, then adding the results together, which
> almost completely makes the calculator worthless.