Half of this video would make the ultimate intro to Computer Science. It's good that you talked about the "Programmer" section; because that contains THE MOST COMMON operations that newbie programmers should know about (i.e., bit shift, the logical operators, the "modulo" operator). Fantastic!
@@JLSXMK8 tbh most newbie programmers, especially these days, are working in high level languages that don't really deal with bit level operations. Not that they shouldn't learn/know this but he makes a point
As a self-taught undergraduate, I'd say you wouldn't necessarily need to know any bitwise operations unless you're going to be dealing with scenarios such as encryption, protocols, virtual memory addresses, etc. If you're learning a low level language like C, you'd want to know these, especially when working with the Windows API and making bit masks.
Excellent! There are a number of things in here that I didn't know. One point: DMS is a fixed format notation. In other words, 10.5 degrees is not 10 degrees and 3 minutes. 10.5 degrees is 10 degrees 30 minutes, even though the calculator presents it as 10.3 -- the trailing 0 is not displayed. 10.1 degrees in DMS is 10.06, or 10 degrees, 6 minutes.
Good point. I made the same one just now, before I saw yours. For me that's a bust - the DMS calculator is invalid and shouldn't be there in its present form
One of my favorite features is reciprocal (1/X, or X^-1 on other calculators). Its keyboard shortcut is simply 'R'. I find this useful when deciding to say if X is some percentage of Y or vice versa. E.g. 4/5=0.8, then [1/X] = 1.25 (5/4). You can toggle (repeatedly) between the two values, instead of having to enter the other calculation. I also use this when calculating the price of a product per unit (e.g. € per kg), without having to think about whether to enter the price or the package amount first. You can immediately start entering the first number you come across. Then divide by the other number. If it doesn't make sense, take the reciprocal.
Shortcuts at Calculator on Windows 10 are just the same as those on Windows XP. But we can find those shortcuts in help and 'What's this' popup on Window XP but not on Window 10.
Shifts are simple. Shifting right makes every digit move one step to the right. Left moves left. Logical shift does that, and in the bit in the end that doesn't have anything slide into it, it puts 0. So logical shift right of 1101 would be 0110, and a shift left of 1101 would be 1010. With binary numbers, this is very similar to multiplying and dividing by 2, corresponding to shifting left and right respectively. However, negative numbers (2's complement) must have 1 in their leftmost bit, and adding more 1's to their left are like adding more 0's before any number you know - it does nothing. So arithmetic shift does the same as logical shift, except when shifting right it fills in the leftmost bit with the previously-leftmost bit. 1100 (-4) shifted right arithmetically is 1110 (-2) and shifted left is 1000 (-8). Circular shift just takes the discarded bit in the far end and puts it back into the vacant bit at the start. Rotate through carry does the same thing, except it uses a storage bit of a certain arithmetic significance. It's a handy way of extracting its value and testing it, and then you can shift the other way and retrieve your original number.
In fact, high level language compilers will use bit-shifts to avoid actual multiplication/division at all costs. In fact, the TI-83 calculator couldn't multiply or divide at all, except by bit shifting.
@@arturudatsnoi Yeah, anything that can be so thoroughly covered in a single page youtube comment is simple, especially when compared to "simple" arithmetic. Even elementary school level arithmetic text books are many pages long, and they don't really cover arithmetic completely. For that, you need a large portion of Principia Mathematica. (Even that is "incomplete".)
@@arturudatsnoi if you know binary, then it is pretty simple. but if not, you can understand it by using decimal where everything is 0 to 9, using money. So if you have $5.00 five dollars. and you shift that 5 to the left, since you're in base 10, everything becomes 10 times as much, and you get fifty dollars, $50.00. If you shift to the right, it's like dividing by 10, and you get $5, or five dollars. In binary it's the same, but you only get zeros and ones. Also instead of becoming ten times as much, it becomes twice as much in binary. - Rotation is also easy. with 1250, if you move to the left you just move the 0 to where the 5 is. and 5 to where 2 is. Because the 1 is on the end, it's said to wrap around to the other side. So it becomes 2501. If it were binary like 101010 that's 42 in decimal. If you rotate left it turns into 010101 because the 1 wraps around to the right side. and that in decimal is 21
I hope Microsoft can bring clearer indications of shortcut keys! I love the way traditional Windows applications show their shortcut keys. For example, using an underlined letter in the button text to indicate Alt+ being a shortcut, or showing a tooltip after pressing Alt, or showing the shortcut key of the button when we hover it. Somehow, such simple hints seem to be lost in more recent Windows applications, even in Office suite software. For example, pressing Alt in Teams shows nothing and I cannot select different elements easily without my mouse or tapping Tab a thousand times. And from what I have heard, in File Explorer, I still cannot jump between main content and navigation bar easily. I wish Microsoft will take a deeper look at how they hint the shortcuts.
Keyboard shortcuts in Windows were always kinda hidden tho unfortunately. Or did you know that F2 lets you rename a file, F3 lets you search and F12 directly opens the "save as" dialogue in Office and lets you skip that bloated and confusing menu?
In fact, on Windows XP and before, if one right clicks on a button, a context menu 'What's this' will show up. He can clicks it and gets a short description of the button's function and its keyboard shortcut. I have no idea why this function disappears since Windows 7. It's a pity. Besides, the help of Calculator on Windows XP also shows all the shortcuts of the buttons.
@@scoutskylar Not quite the same as Windows XP and before. Shortcuts, tooltips and What's this are for each button. You can inquire the usage for each button on Windows XP and before. On Windows 11, pressing Alt key only shows the toolbar shortcuts and isn't as obvious as that on Windows XP.
programmer calculator is the most useful imo. Not only for converting between hex and decimal, but also for setting individual bits and seeing what the resulting hex value is. Good for finding what value a mode or command register should be or something like that. The bit shift is also pretty useful if a register uses only the higher n bits of a value. For memory mapping in x86, you use the top 10 bits for the directory, next 10 bits for the page, and the bottom 12 bits for the address in the page. Right shifting by 10 and 20 is an easy way to get the directory and page numbers.
Toggling bits is great when you want to make bit-mapped graphics. You just come up with the appropriate bit pattern for the part of the graphic you're working on and the calculator tells you what hex, decimal or octal value you'll need in order to create that bit pattern.
Fun fact about the Calculator up to Windows 8. Every computer that had it had a major security weak point. It could access the system memory and protected areas of the CPU. It is difficult to exploit put can be to gain access to system memory and CPU. Fixed when the Windows App Store version was released.
Are you sure you aren't confusing this with DLL injection? I can't seem to find information on this exploit. But I would appreciate information if you have it!
Teaspoons and tablespoons (pretty much 5 & 15 ml) are still used in recipes in the UK, particularly in older books. We have everything in metric by law, but depending on what you're looking at, it might well have imperial measurements too. Our non-metric weights & measures tend to be a bit bugger than yours of the same name. A gallon is 4.54 litres, whereas I believe that US gallons are 4. I could be wrong! Our pints are 4 fl oz bigger for definite, and unless we have a US cookbook, we don't use cups. HTH :) Thanks for the info about the calculator, I had never bothered to look at it because I have a cracking free one on my phone (HiPER) and a graphics calculator pro version that I got free (my favourite price). When my eldest went to uni to be an engineer (though he became a scientist instead) I bought him _the_ Texas graphics calculator that all students of maths have (I was lucky, my uni leant me one, 21 years ago. I was a "mature" student - by age if not by description) and the software to go with it. Even though it's been 13 years since he first went, I remember it cost me £114 in total! Fortunately I still had my "how to use the calculator" book, which is massive!
I've noticed cup measures - as in, physical measuring cups you'd use in the kitchen - have become more common in the UK in the last 15 years or so. I guess they grew more popular as people started getting their recipes online instead of from books, and US recipes often only showed cups (or US fl oz). Digital kitchen scales invariably have the option to show ml or fl oz. More recently, a lot of websites seem to allow toggling between some combination of metric/imperial/US units, which is helpful. Like most units, I think we generally use a mishmash of metric and imperial with some US thrown in for good measure - certainly my kitchen drawer has an array of measuring spoons, cups, and other accoutrements!
England adopted the Imperial system around 1825. The US had a falling out with England around 1776. That's why the US never adopted the Imperial system, the US uses the US Customary System which was based on the older Winchester standards. Imperial gallon (UK) ≈ 4.54L US gallon ≈ 3.78L
Not that it would help for a video almost 2 months old, but after the hamburger menu is open, if you press Alt again, you can see the letter shortcut for what you want. So, your example for Area and Angle, you actual type "AR" for area and "AN" for angle.
The older versions of Windows Calculator (the classic 9x/XP one and the Windows 7/8 one, which still exists in some Windows 10-based systems) also had a Statistics mode, where you could calculate the mean value, the sum or standard deviation of given values. Of course you can do it in Excel, but I don't know why that was removed from Windows 10 calculator.
i think they stopped including it after windows 8 because there was some kind of security issues that could hack the system memory and cpu maybe they redid the calculator after that so the stats mode got removed
I think the Windows 7 style calculator still remains in systems which don't have UWP apps and Microsoft Store. I have a Windows Server 2019 virtual machine on my laptop and it still has the old calculator. I've seen an overview of Windows 10 LTSC 2019 on CZcams and it also has one. Yeah, I've heard about security issues, but in these cases, either they have been patched or a new calculator will be included in later releases.
*As a tech guru (40+years), I thought I knew just about everything there's to know. Seriously, I didn't know about that calculator simple Always on Top features! And I have a few of "Stay on Top Apps!" Again, this show that we do indeed still learn something new every day, no matter how much we think we know.*
"dms" converts degrees into degrees, but the decimal part is converted into base 60. So 10.5 degrees is (as with 10.5 hours) 10 degrees and 30 minutes. Not 10 degrees and 3 minutes. It is a weird function.
I've been a subscriber ever since you released that satire video of you washing a motherboard to get rid of viruses. That was YEARS ago. You, still, never disappoint with your content. I've been programming on Windows 10 since it came out, and used the programming calculator and the other converter calcs countless times. Im blown away by all the shit I have been over looking for years. Typically, I would just create a quick and dirty calc in my IDE to get me by, but the game has just been changed.
i think the reason for the mebibyte confusion is that historically they always used powers of 2 and called them megabytes, and then at some point in the late 90s some organization decided that was confusing since those prefixes usually refer to powers of 10. so they made up new words like mebibyte to retcon the old terminology and try to make a new standard, but not everyone adopted the new standard. so some people still use the old definition of megabyte using powers of 2, and some use the new one and use mebi for legacy reasons or to convert them. and some people just never got the memo that theres a difference at all. probably the people that never switched are older programmers that got used to the old standard, or its a backwards compatibility thing (we all know how much windows loves backwards compatibility).
I'm certain it was the hard disk manufacturers that started the confusion. They suddenly changed, as you say, sometime in the 90s from the powers of 2 to the powers of 10 usages because it made their drives sound suddenly all that much larger. It was all a marketing thing that has resulted in no end of confusion ever since.
The hard drive manufacturers started doing it in the late 90s but they always had to put an asterisk on their capacities pointing out the actual capacity. When I got my computer science degree in the early 00s it was still the proper way of counting them
MiB was standardized in 2009. Prior to that, MB was used for both base10 and base2. Mostly because storage companies wanted to make their devices appear larger than they were. The standardization is taking awhile to catch on.
You are right, the binary prefixes became part of the ISO standards quite recently (2008-2009). But I have to mention that they have actually been around for much longer - "In 1998, the IEC introduced the binary prefixes kibi, mebi, gibi"
I can't stand it because kibibytes sounds like a dog treat 🤣 but in all honesty you know how American units make no sense to metric users? That's how a computer would feel about metric (if it had feelings). Base 10 is not easy for a computer to work in, as it's not a power of 2. So making kilobytes be 10^3 just for consistency is silly.
Well, to be fair, Mililiters are used for liquid and Cubic Centimeters could be used for area without thinking about liquid at all. A cubic Decimeter (10cm or 0.1m) is actually exactly a liter, we had a metal cubic decimeter cube at school when I was 8, it was a great visualizer! These measurements exist, are (probably) all used and overlap because the Metric system, and I quote: "Wasn't invented by a drunk mathematician rolling dice" :D
I never noticed the always on top as I stopped using Standard calculator back in Windows XP, as it stopped to correctly do order of operations (e.g 5 * 2 + 3 * 7) when pasting expressions. Standard will calculate (5 * 2 + 3) * 7 from left to right, while Scientific does correctly (5 * 2) + (3 * 7). This is still true with the UWP Windows 10 version of the Calculator app.
What I don't like about "Always On top" in the calculator is that when you want to use the scientific calculator, while also having it on top, you cannot do that
Damn do I love this CZcamsr. He's really good with explaining and his choice of word are very precise, accurate and descriptive. Another thing is he won't just tell you what the shortcuts are but also what they stand for and all it's details. I've seen multiple of his videos and they always impress me how well done his videos are. Funny thing is I remember hating him back then for some of his troll videos. It's an era where how to basics and trolling was a famous thing and he hoped on this trend but as usual. He perfects everything so he was dead serious making this troll videos making it very hard to tell if it's a joke or not and alot fell for it and got mad plus he broke alot of people's trust and it kinda ruined his brand so I believe he unlisted the videos but they are still there lol
So, basically what I learned from this video is: I wasted a lot of time/internet looking for things that exists locally on my PC. Well, thank you daddy ThioJoe, this is probably one of the most helpful videos on CZcams for me (especially the part that talks about binary operations and bit shifting).
Pro tip: just press (not hold) ALT and labels with appropriate key will appear (not sure about W11, but works on W10). Such as H for menu, I for history and M for memory. But there is more. You do not have to select ARea manually, it has also shortcut and that is alt+AR and obviously alt+AN for ANgle, alt+AB for ABout. But that still does not end. You can use it in almost in any program, just as browser/notepad and menu will have underscored characters, which are the key corresponding to them. E.g., alt+F = File menu.
The scientific calculator displays history as for example: 5+5+5+5= 20, which is what I prefer. The standard calculator did it this way at one time but now displays the same operation as 5+5=10 10+5=15 15+5=20. The reason I prefer the way the scientific does it, is I can see much more easily if I have entered the numbers correctly. I see no way to make the standard do it like the scientific. Thanks.
Also, I just realized that (especially when pasting a formula in) the Scientific calculator takes order of operation into account properly. The Standard mode does not. For example: if you paste in the formula 3+4*5 the Scientific returns 23 (correct) where the Standard one returns 35 (not correct if you do the multiplication first)
3:19 I should mention that this one isn't necessarily shift+2 but rather whatever will type an @ symbol on your specific keyboard layout so if you're on a different layout then shift+2 won't work
When I went through computer/programming school back in 19xx all units GB, KB, TB, etc. were base 2 (1KB = 1024) but with the spread of computer users the computer sellers started making it easier for the users (i.e., 1kB = 1000) which actually made it more confusing.
And then SI changed base 2 to base 10 for all units, and added new base 2 unit with "i" in the middle... Windows is showing base 2 becouse that was old standard and probably it was left as it is for compatybility reason... or they just dont care
The change was primarily for marketing HDD's, where the platters could hold any amount of data. Ever notice how solid-state (RAM and flash memory) amounts are always in powers of two (16, 32, 64, etc.)?
I agree with the confusion, especially for all of us who grew up on 2^10 as the multiple, instead of 1,000. The discrepancy between the advertised capacity and actual capacity of a device also comes, partially, from things like the MBR and partition tables taking up space, and more.
I learned a number of new things, some useful to me and rest mostly of academic interest. One thing you did not mention is that you can open several calculators. They will open as the last selected type. I do this often when watching EU videos. I open Temp, Length, and Speed (sometimes Currency) so I can easily translate values into what I understand.
Extremely useful video. I feel dumb for not exploring all these features. It's amazing how much you can do with this seemingly simple program. I would like to see more videos on this topic: things you never thought you could do with x program in Windows. I'm sure there are many more secret or hidden features in the OS that could be time savers.
I had no idea the graphic calculator was that powerful. Also adding days onto dates is something that I do pretty often. Will have to remember to try the calculator next time instead of using so random website
6:16 - Just a nitpick from a nerd that had to deal with this on a physical calculator in high school. When you type in 10.5 and hit DMS, it's actually 10 degrees and 30 minutes (not 3). In the display format, it should read "10.30" (but, because the display drops trailing zeroes after the decimal point, it looks like "10.3"). An "upgraded" version of my physical calculator would show degree, minute, and second markers instead of using the decimal point (and had a special key for entering an angle in degree/minute/second format). I wish the Windows calculator would do the same; it would make it much more clear.
I remember as a NON-geek-nerd kid using the memory and other functions to perform the early days of rudimentary programming, in essence each string across those RED L.E.D.s was a line of code, and you could have a series of functions ready to perform upon a given input and then give you the solutions. There were no lockouts or hidden files or special instructions, anyone had total access or "root" all the time. .. of course that led to phone freaking and stealing, which was AWESOME!
I like the idea that the programmer calculator has no real world use and no normal people need to use the bitwise Boolean operators. As a programmer I've only ever used it and the basic/scientific calculator
I loved when they included the currency calculator (and when my country, Venezuela, actually started using more and more the official currency... Well, when it's convenient), I didn't necessarily like the look though, but it's way more functional than people think.
I searched for a video on the 'Programmer' mode for the Windows Calculator, and yours came up top (I'm subscribed). So many features that are just hidden away! Thanks for sharing.
What if I told you that the calculators you use in school don't actually know how to multiply or divide and do it all with repeated bit shifting, addition, and subtraction? True story.
To explain bit shifting, an arithmetic shift right will copy the sign bit as it shifts to the right. So 1011 shifted right 2 times will be 1110. An unsigned shift right by 2 would make it 0010. Left shifts will copy 0 bits, so shifting left by 2 bits will be 1100. A rotation will copy the bits around in a circle, so a rotation left or right by 2 bits would make it 1110. One further note on arithmetic shifts right, the sign bit isn't a toggle on x86 and ARM computers. They use a system called 2's complement negation, so to negate a number you can't just flip that bit you have to flip all of the bits and add one. It sounds counter intuitive, but it is actually more efficient when doing math with mixed signs than the older 1's complement system was since with that system the sign bit *was* a toggle and had to be considered separately. An example: 1 == 0001 to negate it, flip ~1 == 1110 and +1 == 1111 which is the nybble representation of -1.
I feel a small sense of power over knowing almost all of this, and having used half of it. the memory and bitshift keypad I didnt know tho, pretty cool.
As a long time user of the windows calculator, I found this video fun to watch. One thing that you did not mention about the difference between "Standard" and "Scientific" is how they do basic math. "Standard" calculator is really an adding machine and does everything as you enter it. 1 + 2 * 3 will equal 9. In "Scientific" mode, it is a calculator and will use order of operation when performing a calculation so 1 + 2 * 3 will equal 7. This is an important thing to know when using any thing we call a calculator. The easy way to know which it is, is to look for parenthesis. If a device has them, it will likely use order of operation. If it does not have them, it is likely an adding machine and will do stuff in the order you enter it.
Hello tuber, nitpicker here. 10.5 degrees are actually 10 degrees 30 minutes, since dms are divided into chunks of 60 just like time. Very useful for converting lattitude and longitude between Google and other systems actually.
It would be nice if "Always on Top" would work in all modes other than Standard. And let it stay in the position it's already at like the lower right corner instead of going to the top! I hate having to move the calculator to another screen just to keep it visible and reasonably close to the other app I need it for, but that's a lot more mouse movement or Alt-Tab presses!
I had fiddled around a lot on clac.exe but I'm still happy by the vid as there were some features which I didn't know but will be definitely helpful in the future. And nice work on the editing!
You left out the most important thing to know about Calculator: If you have it in Standard mode it will not use order of operations. That means that if you type in: 1+2*3= in Standard mode it will display the result to be 9 but in Scientific mode it will be 7.
That's just plain wrong in the standard mode. Order of operations is a math thing, not "scientific". It is pretty strange IMO that Microsoft should use an incorrect order of operations in the standard calculator.
@@coriscotupi I guess it's a emulation of how the cheap and simple calculators work. Try them yourself if you come by one in a drug store or supermarket.
If I am not wrong, many of these options are present Windows 7's calculator with different UI. Also, it is currently an open-source program mentained on github and probably that's why received many new features at a good pace. I really miss the win7 calculator's number editing feature where you can correct the numbers used for an arithmetic operation just by double-clicking on that operation line/row. This saves the trouble of retyping the entire operation just because of you entered one wrong number.
I just checked as a result of your comment. And your memory is good. Thanks for the info, since yes, I do spend some time on a Window 7 system. I've been doing a google search of the type what is 30 days after today every time I needed to know some date calcs.
I never liked the windows calculator because it never cleared the numbers properly for some reason. But maybe I was just using CE instead of C? It always annoyingly used the last function I used.
Being a system administrator for 15+ years, you would think that I would have know much of what you discussed. Nope! I can see some immediate use for some of what you pointed out. Thanks for bringing me up to date.
11:35 Binary SI prefixes are a fairly recent invention. For most of the history or computer science a "kilobyte" was usually 1,024 bytes (since that's the power of 2 closest to 1,000 and working in powers of 2 is more convenient for computers). This standard was very widely used (even officially by the IEEE). So even though we have binary prefixes now (the IEC officially published them in 1999) many areas of the industry continue to the decimal prefixes with binary values.
The programmer calculators is actually pretty useful for programmers, especially those who programs lower level or embedded stuffs. Basically it has to do with how many hardware make use of part of a byte/word to do something in order to save resource, and thus it's really helpful to know exactly how each bit goes in a whole byte/word.
@@williamdrum9899 Some programming language/config file doesn't even allow any non-decimal literals. In fact if it were just hex value you don't really need a tool to do the conversion -- you memorize the binary to hex conversion and do it in your head, and that's basically the only reason hex value is a thing.
When I took chemistry in the late 60's, I believe 1 ml equaled a little bit more than 1 CC because the standards for the length and volume were not precise. That has been corrected since then maybe when the definition of a meter was changed as a fraction of the distance from one of the poles to the equator to the distance that light travels in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
11:06 I'm from the UK and I have never used any of those weird UK units except pints. I always just estimate how much a teaspoon/tablespoon is using an actual spoon. Also, I have never heard of fluid ounces being used in the UK let alone having a different value to US fluid ounces, weird.
A imperial pint is 20 imperial fluid ounces. 160 fluid ounces/8 pints is an imperial gallon and 10 pounds of water. 1 fluid ounce of water has the mass of 1 ounce, 1/16 of a pound. Harmonious!
In the "old" calculator that got shipped before this one, the hex digits were on the scientific screen. Now, if you have done a calculation in the "normal" calculator and you want to convert to hex, when you switch to programmers mode, the value is lost. I wish they'd still shipping the old one besides this one.
The one thing I TRULY hate about the Windows calculator - the need to constantly switch between Scientific and Programmer. All they had to do was keep the binary/hex displays in scientific mode as well...
If you press and release ALT it will show you all the key combinations for that screen. This allows you to learn the ones for those menu options you thought didn't have one. :) Also KB/MB/GB/TB etc have traditionally been in units of 1024 not 1000. I guess it's only a recent thing where 1000 has been a more accepted measurement, but I suspect it's hard drive manufacturers trying to maximize their numbers while minimizing the actual disk space they put in their drives (you can see your 2TB drive is not quite that big if you use the 1024 scale).
For 2 TB you lose almost 10% of what most people expect to get. But for 2 Megabytes you lose only 5% (since you get 1.9 Mebibytes). The more storage space you buy without knowing this difference the more you lose.
Metric prefixes have been measured in power of 10s since the introduction of the metric system in 1970s or so. It's not that recent tbh. When we were measuring smaller sizes such as Kilobyte and kibibyte, differences were negligible. Even though it’s not the same for Terabytes the habit stayed I guess.
Is N the shortcut for Angles? I don't have an English Windows to check. Usually, it's the first available letter (but applications can also manually pick a letter by prefixing it with &)
Programmer calculator is great for networking as well. See any ip address and binary for it. Useful in reading net mask and which network your ip is part of.
This was such a pleasant surprise!!! I teach 1st and 2nd year Mathematics at Cal Poly Pomona & watched the video out of curiosity. I was amazed at the versatility of Windows Calculator and amazed at how useful the information packed into this video conveyed.
@@theairaccumulator7144 I am sure they are useful to normal, abnormal people, as well as abnormal, abnormal people. Speaking as a normal, abnormal person myself.
Superb! Was knowing calculator literally by "face" only! Great job explaining everything in detail! So much behind that simple interface. Looking forward for more on other Windows apps revealing the "secrets"...
I knew most of what you covered here, but you did introduce some interesting items that were new to even me! I found this to be very informative and interesting, which is a reflection of your preparation.
I gotta say, I use the programmer section a lot, including bit shift, but I never realised it had different bit shift modes. And man, that's gonna come in handy! And I always forget that they introduced a graphing mode. I've just filed it under "nuisance" because I got so used to Alt+3 being the shortcut to programming mode, then they changed it. I always end up on Desmos, but maybe I don't need to. 🤔
Calculator is the hallmark of Windows for centuries together with Clock. I like the tone in your voice, trying not to laugh, because you know Thiol Joe, that you are a Mac.😂
I remember your old trolling videos, so I'd always avoid you bc I'd see you in the thumbnails. To find out you've been dropping gems now! Glad you came around 🙏
Small point about the dms function you demonstrate. 10.5 converted to dms (10.3) is 10 degrees, 30 minutes not the '3 minutes' you described. Apparently the calc drops the trailing zero, which can be pretty confusing.
Yes the imperial system was revised from the Queen Ann imperial system that was taken to the US by the pilgrims. In 1824 the 'weights and measures act' changed the pint to 20oz (and hence the UK gallon increased as a result) and the change to the long ton which is 2240lbs, the original 2000lb ton hence forth was referred to as a short ton.
One of the most useful uses for bit shifting is multiplying by powers of 2. The arithmetic shift left is "multiplication by power of 2", and the number of bits shifted is the power. If you have 5, for example, and you shift-left by two bits, it's like multiplying by 2^2, so 5*4 = 20. This is how CPUs (technically, the ALU) improve performance calculating multiplications.
Wholy Crap ... Im 56 yrs old, quite tech savvy, been in communications/IT all my life ... I did not know the calc did all that crap, ok, add to bucket list, play with the calculator.... TY !!!! and THAT my friends, is why I like/subscribe to this guy.....
Degrees and DMS are the most important functions for navigators. As a mariner this is very useful and not so many scientific calculators can convert for example 10.5 degrees, you want to add for example 6 minutes so the result should show as 10.6 degrees. I didn't know that windows calculator is capable of doing that but this makes waaay more easier some basic navigation calculations.
One thing I miss about the old versions of the Windows Calculator is Statistics mode. It automatically saved every number into a list in memory, and there were buttons to calculate the sum, mean, and standard deviation. I do love the graphing calculator though, which more than makes up for the lack of statistics mode.
I never knew I needed a 13 minute video on the windows calculator. It’s a lot more advanced than I thought
I didn't know the floor and ceiling is based on a flat earth. There is no R value! :-)
I always thought that it was such a basic calculator.o
Life is full of surprises...
Same!!
Shame they discontinued Microsoft Mathematics from their research division.
Half of this video would make the ultimate intro to Computer Science. It's good that you talked about the "Programmer" section; because that contains THE MOST COMMON operations that newbie programmers should know about (i.e., bit shift, the logical operators, the "modulo" operator). Fantastic!
Bit shift part of the most common operations that newbie programmers should know about, come on now...
@@coIdkristen What??? Come on! You've never heard of a circular bit shift? I even know what that is, and I graduated college last year.
@@JLSXMK8 tbh most newbie programmers, especially these days, are working in high level languages that don't really deal with bit level operations. Not that they shouldn't learn/know this but he makes a point
As a self-taught undergraduate, I'd say you wouldn't necessarily need to know any bitwise operations unless you're going to be dealing with scenarios such as encryption, protocols, virtual memory addresses, etc. If you're learning a low level language like C, you'd want to know these, especially when working with the Windows API and making bit masks.
All I can say is I wish I knew about this years ago
And there is a company still trying to develop worlds best calculator app for decades.
Its still missing Gematria calculator...so, it can improve!
Apple ☕
@@jdtech7976 never mention that name on public unless u have a few hour to fight with fanboys.
@@starksuman we cant even downvote his comment anymore
Apple ☕
Excellent! There are a number of things in here that I didn't know. One point: DMS is a fixed format notation. In other words, 10.5 degrees is not 10 degrees and 3 minutes. 10.5 degrees is 10 degrees 30 minutes, even though the calculator presents it as 10.3 -- the trailing 0 is not displayed. 10.1 degrees in DMS is 10.06, or 10 degrees, 6 minutes.
If Microsoft notated it as DD°MM'SS" then it would make it clear.
Good point. I made the same one just now, before I saw yours. For me that's a bust - the DMS calculator is invalid and shouldn't be there in its present form
One of my favorite features is reciprocal (1/X, or X^-1 on other calculators). Its keyboard shortcut is simply 'R'.
I find this useful when deciding to say if X is some percentage of Y or vice versa. E.g. 4/5=0.8, then [1/X] = 1.25 (5/4). You can toggle (repeatedly) between the two values, instead of having to enter the other calculation.
I also use this when calculating the price of a product per unit (e.g. € per kg), without having to think about whether to enter the price or the package amount first. You can immediately start entering the first number you come across. Then divide by the other number. If it doesn't make sense, take the reciprocal.
No
"Cannot divide by zero"
Shortcuts at Calculator on Windows 10 are just the same as those on Windows XP. But we can find those shortcuts in help and 'What's this' popup on Window XP but not on Window 10.
Shifts are simple. Shifting right makes every digit move one step to the right. Left moves left. Logical shift does that, and in the bit in the end that doesn't have anything slide into it, it puts 0. So logical shift right of 1101 would be 0110, and a shift left of 1101 would be 1010. With binary numbers, this is very similar to multiplying and dividing by 2, corresponding to shifting left and right respectively. However, negative numbers (2's complement) must have 1 in their leftmost bit, and adding more 1's to their left are like adding more 0's before any number you know - it does nothing. So arithmetic shift does the same as logical shift, except when shifting right it fills in the leftmost bit with the previously-leftmost bit. 1100 (-4) shifted right arithmetically is 1110 (-2) and shifted left is 1000 (-8). Circular shift just takes the discarded bit in the far end and puts it back into the vacant bit at the start. Rotate through carry does the same thing, except it uses a storage bit of a certain arithmetic significance. It's a handy way of extracting its value and testing it, and then you can shift the other way and retrieve your original number.
In fact, high level language compilers will use bit-shifts to avoid actual multiplication/division at all costs. In fact, the TI-83 calculator couldn't multiply or divide at all, except by bit shifting.
SImple?????
@@arturudatsnoi Yeah, anything that can be so thoroughly covered in a single page youtube comment is simple, especially when compared to "simple" arithmetic. Even elementary school level arithmetic text books are many pages long, and they don't really cover arithmetic completely. For that, you need a large portion of Principia Mathematica. (Even that is "incomplete".)
@@arturudatsnoi if you know binary, then it is pretty simple. but if not, you can understand it by using decimal where everything is 0 to 9, using money. So if you have $5.00 five dollars. and you shift that 5 to the left, since you're in base 10, everything becomes 10 times as much, and you get fifty dollars, $50.00. If you shift to the right, it's like dividing by 10, and you get $5, or five dollars. In binary it's the same, but you only get zeros and ones. Also instead of becoming ten times as much, it becomes twice as much in binary. - Rotation is also easy. with 1250, if you move to the left you just move the 0 to where the 5 is. and 5 to where 2 is. Because the 1 is on the end, it's said to wrap around to the other side. So it becomes 2501. If it were binary like 101010 that's 42 in decimal. If you rotate left it turns into 010101 because the 1 wraps around to the right side. and that in decimal is 21
I hope Microsoft can bring clearer indications of shortcut keys!
I love the way traditional Windows applications show their shortcut keys. For example, using an underlined letter in the button text to indicate Alt+ being a shortcut, or showing a tooltip after pressing Alt, or showing the shortcut key of the button when we hover it.
Somehow, such simple hints seem to be lost in more recent Windows applications, even in Office suite software. For example, pressing Alt in Teams shows nothing and I cannot select different elements easily without my mouse or tapping Tab a thousand times. And from what I have heard, in File Explorer, I still cannot jump between main content and navigation bar easily.
I wish Microsoft will take a deeper look at how they hint the shortcuts.
Keyboard shortcuts in Windows were always kinda hidden tho unfortunately. Or did you know that F2 lets you rename a file, F3 lets you search and F12 directly opens the "save as" dialogue in Office and lets you skip that bloated and confusing menu?
In fact, on Windows XP and before, if one right clicks on a button, a context menu 'What's this' will show up. He can clicks it and gets a short description of the button's function and its keyboard shortcut. I have no idea why this function disappears since Windows 7. It's a pity.
Besides, the help of Calculator on Windows XP also shows all the shortcuts of the buttons.
I'm not sure about Windows 10, but on Windows 11, the calculator app does show the tooltips when you press alt. Very useful!
@@scoutskylar Not quite the same as Windows XP and before. Shortcuts, tooltips and What's this are for each button. You can inquire the usage for each button on Windows XP and before. On Windows 11, pressing Alt key only shows the toolbar shortcuts and isn't as obvious as that on Windows XP.
@@chukaml Oh, cool!
programmer calculator is the most useful imo. Not only for converting between hex and decimal, but also for setting individual bits and seeing what the resulting hex value is. Good for finding what value a mode or command register should be or something like that. The bit shift is also pretty useful if a register uses only the higher n bits of a value. For memory mapping in x86, you use the top 10 bits for the directory, next 10 bits for the page, and the bottom 12 bits for the address in the page. Right shifting by 10 and 20 is an easy way to get the directory and page numbers.
YESSS it was so awesome when I found this. Toggling the bits really helped me a lot!
HP-16
Toggling bits is great when you want to make bit-mapped graphics. You just come up with the appropriate bit pattern for the part of the graphic you're working on and the calculator tells you what hex, decimal or octal value you'll need in order to create that bit pattern.
Me: I wonder if he can make a 13 minute long video about Windows Calculator exciting? 🤔
13 minutes later: More!!!
Even in college I never understood how memory worked on a calculator.... This would been so FUCKING USEFUL ON MY MIDTERM
How could it have helped? Meaning what can you do with memory?
Figured it out on my bulky physical calculator in middle school
I wasn’t aware, windows calculator has built in plotting capabilities. I use to go to wolfram alpha for all my plotting needs. Thanks ThioJoe!
I usually use Desmos, but WA is better if you need arbitrary precision
WolframAlpha is still the better option
Fun fact about the Calculator up to Windows 8. Every computer that had it had a major security weak point. It could access the system memory and protected areas of the CPU. It is difficult to exploit put can be to gain access to system memory and CPU. Fixed when the Windows App Store version was released.
Some kind of use after free exploit, right?
is this related to --ffast-math issue with CPU flag?
The exploitable version of the calculator is still distributed as a way to run malware through DLL side-loading. It's wild.
Are you sure you aren't confusing this with DLL injection?
I can't seem to find information on this exploit. But I would appreciate information if you have it!
Lol how did that work? Could it let you write to arbitrary memory?
Teaspoons and tablespoons (pretty much 5 & 15 ml) are still used in recipes in the UK, particularly in older books. We have everything in metric by law, but depending on what you're looking at, it might well have imperial measurements too. Our non-metric weights & measures tend to be a bit bugger than yours of the same name. A gallon is 4.54 litres, whereas I believe that US gallons are 4. I could be wrong! Our pints are 4 fl oz bigger for definite, and unless we have a US cookbook, we don't use cups.
HTH :)
Thanks for the info about the calculator, I had never bothered to look at it because I have a cracking free one on my phone (HiPER) and a graphics calculator pro version that I got free (my favourite price). When my eldest went to uni to be an engineer (though he became a scientist instead) I bought him _the_ Texas graphics calculator that all students of maths have (I was lucky, my uni leant me one, 21 years ago. I was a "mature" student - by age if not by description) and the software to go with it. Even though it's been 13 years since he first went, I remember it cost me £114 in total! Fortunately I still had my "how to use the calculator" book, which is massive!
I've noticed cup measures - as in, physical measuring cups you'd use in the kitchen - have become more common in the UK in the last 15 years or so. I guess they grew more popular as people started getting their recipes online instead of from books, and US recipes often only showed cups (or US fl oz). Digital kitchen scales invariably have the option to show ml or fl oz.
More recently, a lot of websites seem to allow toggling between some combination of metric/imperial/US units, which is helpful.
Like most units, I think we generally use a mishmash of metric and imperial with some US thrown in for good measure - certainly my kitchen drawer has an array of measuring spoons, cups, and other accoutrements!
England adopted the Imperial system around 1825. The US had a falling out with England around 1776. That's why the US never adopted the Imperial system, the US uses the US Customary System which was based on the older Winchester standards. Imperial gallon (UK) ≈ 4.54L US gallon ≈ 3.78L
Not that it would help for a video almost 2 months old, but after the hamburger menu is open, if you press Alt again, you can see the letter shortcut for what you want. So, your example for Area and Angle, you actual type "AR" for area and "AN" for angle.
I did not know they had integrated some of features of geogebra and desmos into calc. Thanks, you are always helpful.
The older versions of Windows Calculator (the classic 9x/XP one and the Windows 7/8 one, which still exists in some Windows 10-based systems) also had a Statistics mode, where you could calculate the mean value, the sum or standard deviation of given values. Of course you can do it in Excel, but I don't know why that was removed from Windows 10 calculator.
Maybe a get you buy excel move?
@@PrograError Maybe ;)
I think it's there if you did the upgrade from Windows 7 but not on a clean installation. If memory serves.
i think they stopped including it after windows 8 because there was some kind of security issues that could hack the system memory and cpu maybe they redid the calculator after that so the stats mode got removed
I think the Windows 7 style calculator still remains in systems which don't have UWP apps and Microsoft Store. I have a Windows Server 2019 virtual machine on my laptop and it still has the old calculator. I've seen an overview of Windows 10 LTSC 2019 on CZcams and it also has one. Yeah, I've heard about security issues, but in these cases, either they have been patched or a new calculator will be included in later releases.
*As a tech guru (40+years), I thought I knew just about everything there's to know. Seriously, I didn't know about that calculator simple Always on Top features! And I have a few of "Stay on Top Apps!" Again, this show that we do indeed still learn something new every day, no matter how much we think we know.*
"dms" converts degrees into degrees, but the decimal part is converted into base 60. So 10.5 degrees is (as with 10.5 hours) 10 degrees and 30 minutes. Not 10 degrees and 3 minutes. It is a weird function.
If it shows 4 decimal digits, that would make it more clear. 10.3 = 10.3000 means 10°30’00”.
@@checyr Honestly, why didn't they just display it with the proper symbols like that lol
I've been a subscriber ever since you released that satire video of you washing a motherboard to get rid of viruses. That was YEARS ago. You, still, never disappoint with your content. I've been programming on Windows 10 since it came out, and used the programming calculator and the other converter calcs countless times. Im blown away by all the shit I have been over looking for years. Typically, I would just create a quick and dirty calc in my IDE to get me by, but the game has just been changed.
The windows calculator is so much more useful than i though, nice job Microsoft!
After all microsoft made mathsolver (the site), which is the best calculator with steps and explanations included.
i think the reason for the mebibyte confusion is that historically they always used powers of 2 and called them megabytes, and then at some point in the late 90s some organization decided that was confusing since those prefixes usually refer to powers of 10. so they made up new words like mebibyte to retcon the old terminology and try to make a new standard, but not everyone adopted the new standard. so some people still use the old definition of megabyte using powers of 2, and some use the new one and use mebi for legacy reasons or to convert them. and some people just never got the memo that theres a difference at all. probably the people that never switched are older programmers that got used to the old standard, or its a backwards compatibility thing (we all know how much windows loves backwards compatibility).
I'm certain it was the hard disk manufacturers that started the confusion. They suddenly changed, as you say, sometime in the 90s from the powers of 2 to the powers of 10 usages because it made their drives sound suddenly all that much larger. It was all a marketing thing that has resulted in no end of confusion ever since.
The hard drive manufacturers started doing it in the late 90s but they always had to put an asterisk on their capacities pointing out the actual capacity. When I got my computer science degree in the early 00s it was still the proper way of counting them
I still say Kilobyte and mean 2^10
Have a coffee on me, because this is going to save me tons of time going forward. Love your work!
Very epic
MiB was standardized in 2009. Prior to that, MB was used for both base10 and base2. Mostly because storage companies wanted to make their devices appear larger than they were. The standardization is taking awhile to catch on.
You are right, the binary prefixes became part of the ISO standards quite recently (2008-2009). But I have to mention that they have actually been around for much longer - "In 1998, the IEC introduced the binary prefixes kibi, mebi, gibi"
I can't stand it because kibibytes sounds like a dog treat 🤣 but in all honesty you know how American units make no sense to metric users? That's how a computer would feel about metric (if it had feelings). Base 10 is not easy for a computer to work in, as it's not a power of 2. So making kilobytes be 10^3 just for consistency is silly.
Well, to be fair, Mililiters are used for liquid and Cubic Centimeters could be used for area without thinking about liquid at all. A cubic Decimeter (10cm or 0.1m) is actually exactly a liter, we had a metal cubic decimeter cube at school when I was 8, it was a great visualizer! These measurements exist, are (probably) all used and overlap because the Metric system, and I quote: "Wasn't invented by a drunk mathematician rolling dice" :D
I think you mean volume not area but yes, mL and cc both have their uses and 1000ccs or 10cm x 10cm x 10cm is 1L.
Also, at 6:17 ->dms and ->deg and also be used for time calculations. At 6:37 10.5° is 10° 30' (10 degrees 30 minutes).
This guy makes the best videos on youtube about the best topics for real
"cackalader"
I never noticed the always on top as I stopped using Standard calculator back in Windows XP, as it stopped to correctly do order of operations (e.g 5 * 2 + 3 * 7) when pasting expressions. Standard will calculate (5 * 2 + 3) * 7 from left to right, while Scientific does correctly (5 * 2) + (3 * 7). This is still true with the UWP Windows 10 version of the Calculator app.
What I don't like about "Always On top" in the calculator is that when you want to use the scientific calculator, while also having it on top, you cannot do that
Damn do I love this CZcamsr. He's really good with explaining and his choice of word are very precise, accurate and descriptive. Another thing is he won't just tell you what the shortcuts are but also what they stand for and all it's details. I've seen multiple of his videos and they always impress me how well done his videos are. Funny thing is I remember hating him back then for some of his troll videos. It's an era where how to basics and trolling was a famous thing and he hoped on this trend but as usual. He perfects everything so he was dead serious making this troll videos making it very hard to tell if it's a joke or not and alot fell for it and got mad plus he broke alot of people's trust and it kinda ruined his brand so I believe he unlisted the videos but they are still there lol
So, basically what I learned from this video is: I wasted a lot of time/internet looking for things that exists locally on my PC.
Well, thank you daddy ThioJoe, this is probably one of the most helpful videos on CZcams for me (especially the part that talks about binary operations and bit shifting).
11:00 mililiters is for fluids only while cubic centimeters is for basically everything
6:50 “and some of you may have flashbacks to calculus class” well I have flashbacks to the almighty desmos :D
Integration. Differentiation. Vectors 3d and oh, probability
Pro tip: just press (not hold) ALT and labels with appropriate key will appear (not sure about W11, but works on W10). Such as H for menu, I for history and M for memory. But there is more. You do not have to select ARea manually, it has also shortcut and that is alt+AR and obviously alt+AN for ANgle, alt+AB for ABout. But that still does not end. You can use it in almost in any program, just as browser/notepad and menu will have underscored characters, which are the key corresponding to them. E.g., alt+F = File menu.
A classic example of "you don't know what you don't know". Brilliant video - very useful. Thanks!
The scientific calculator displays history as for example: 5+5+5+5= 20, which is what I prefer. The standard calculator did it this way at one time but now displays the same operation as 5+5=10 10+5=15 15+5=20. The reason I prefer the way the scientific does it, is I can see much more easily if I have entered the numbers correctly. I see no way to make the standard do it like the scientific. Thanks.
Also, I just realized that (especially when pasting a formula in) the Scientific calculator takes order of operation into account properly. The Standard mode does not. For example: if you paste in the formula 3+4*5 the Scientific returns 23 (correct) where the Standard one returns 35 (not correct if you do the multiplication first)
3:19 I should mention that this one isn't necessarily shift+2 but rather whatever will type an @ symbol on your specific keyboard layout so if you're on a different layout then shift+2 won't work
Entertaining video. I didn't know there was a menu crammed full of stuff. Stay in the foreground is also useful - Thanks Thio.
When I went through computer/programming school back in 19xx all units GB, KB, TB, etc. were base 2 (1KB = 1024) but with the spread of computer users the computer sellers started making it easier for the users (i.e., 1kB = 1000) which actually made it more confusing.
And then SI changed base 2 to base 10 for all units, and added new base 2 unit with "i" in the middle... Windows is showing base 2 becouse that was old standard and probably it was left as it is for compatybility reason... or they just dont care
The change was primarily for marketing HDD's, where the platters could hold any amount of data. Ever notice how solid-state (RAM and flash memory) amounts are always in powers of two (16, 32, 64, etc.)?
I agree with the confusion, especially for all of us who grew up on 2^10 as the multiple, instead of 1,000.
The discrepancy between the advertised capacity and actual capacity of a device also comes, partially, from things like the MBR and partition tables taking up space, and more.
SI: Makes Kilobytes 1000 instead of 1024
Computers: That wasn't very cash money of you
The new prefixes for binary are now Kibi-, Mebi-, Gibi-, Tebi-, etc., abbreviated as KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB, etc.
I learned a number of new things, some useful to me and rest mostly of academic interest. One thing you did not mention is that you can open several calculators. They will open as the last selected type. I do this often when watching EU videos. I open Temp, Length, and Speed (sometimes Currency) so I can easily translate values into what I understand.
And if you have a keyboard with a 'calculator' key, and inadvertently put something heavy on it, you get LOTS of calculators. Ask me how I know 😂
You mean, like "cool" or "a couple hours' drive away" or "real fast"?
Extremely useful video. I feel dumb for not exploring all these features. It's amazing how much you can do with this seemingly simple program.
I would like to see more videos on this topic: things you never thought you could do with x program in Windows. I'm sure there are many more secret or hidden features in the OS that could be time savers.
I hope they add integrals, derivatives and matrix... it would be so helpful.
also, display fractions like casio calculators would be very nice too
I had no idea the graphic calculator was that powerful. Also adding days onto dates is something that I do pretty often. Will have to remember to try the calculator next time instead of using so random website
6:16 - Just a nitpick from a nerd that had to deal with this on a physical calculator in high school. When you type in 10.5 and hit DMS, it's actually 10 degrees and 30 minutes (not 3). In the display format, it should read "10.30" (but, because the display drops trailing zeroes after the decimal point, it looks like "10.3").
An "upgraded" version of my physical calculator would show degree, minute, and second markers instead of using the decimal point (and had a special key for entering an angle in degree/minute/second format). I wish the Windows calculator would do the same; it would make it much more clear.
You really get to know someone when you see their calculator history.
80085
Normies: asks to see text message history.
Gigachads: asks to see calculator history.
I remember as a NON-geek-nerd kid using the memory and other functions to perform the early days of rudimentary programming, in essence each string across those RED L.E.D.s was a line of code, and you could have a series of functions ready to perform upon a given input and then give you the solutions. There were no lockouts or hidden files or special instructions, anyone had total access or "root" all the time. .. of course that led to phone freaking and stealing, which was AWESOME!
8:01 Hex uses 0 through 9 and A through F. Base 16. 16 "numbers" to use.
I like the idea that the programmer calculator has no real world use and no normal people need to use the bitwise Boolean operators. As a programmer I've only ever used it and the basic/scientific calculator
I loved when they included the currency calculator (and when my country, Venezuela, actually started using more and more the official currency... Well, when it's convenient), I didn't necessarily like the look though, but it's way more functional than people think.
I had to look up what a hamburger menu was...
I searched for a video on the 'Programmer' mode for the Windows Calculator, and yours came up top (I'm subscribed). So many features that are just hidden away! Thanks for sharing.
What if I told you that the calculators you use in school don't actually know how to multiply or divide and do it all with repeated bit shifting, addition, and subtraction? True story.
My antique calculating machine multiplies by repeated adding and the carriage can be shifted so that x125 is 5 cranks shift 2 cranks shift 1 crank.
ThioJoe, only you could have made this as interesting as you did. Thanks for the very good video, as usual.
To explain bit shifting, an arithmetic shift right will copy the sign bit as it shifts to the right. So 1011 shifted right 2 times will be 1110. An unsigned shift right by 2 would make it 0010. Left shifts will copy 0 bits, so shifting left by 2 bits will be 1100. A rotation will copy the bits around in a circle, so a rotation left or right by 2 bits would make it 1110.
One further note on arithmetic shifts right, the sign bit isn't a toggle on x86 and ARM computers. They use a system called 2's complement negation, so to negate a number you can't just flip that bit you have to flip all of the bits and add one. It sounds counter intuitive, but it is actually more efficient when doing math with mixed signs than the older 1's complement system was since with that system the sign bit *was* a toggle and had to be considered separately. An example: 1 == 0001 to negate it, flip ~1 == 1110 and +1 == 1111 which is the nybble representation of -1.
Well explained! Can you explain Rotate through carry circular shift, too?
6:33 A slight mistake, that's 10 degrees 30 minutes instead of 10 degrees 3 minutes
I feel a small sense of power over knowing almost all of this, and having used half of it. the memory and bitshift keypad I didnt know tho, pretty cool.
Well, how didn't you know about the memory? :P
even my trusty calculator hide stuff from me
As a long time user of the windows calculator, I found this video fun to watch. One thing that you did not mention about the difference between "Standard" and "Scientific" is how they do basic math. "Standard" calculator is really an adding machine and does everything as you enter it. 1 + 2 * 3 will equal 9. In "Scientific" mode, it is a calculator and will use order of operation when performing a calculation so 1 + 2 * 3 will equal 7. This is an important thing to know when using any thing we call a calculator. The easy way to know which it is, is to look for parenthesis. If a device has them, it will likely use order of operation. If it does not have them, it is likely an adding machine and will do stuff in the order you enter it.
Hello tuber, nitpicker here. 10.5 degrees are actually 10 degrees 30 minutes, since dms are divided into chunks of 60 just like time.
Very useful for converting lattitude and longitude between Google and other systems actually.
It would be nice if "Always on Top" would work in all modes other than Standard. And let it stay in the position it's already at like the lower right corner instead of going to the top! I hate having to move the calculator to another screen just to keep it visible and reasonably close to the other app I need it for, but that's a lot more mouse movement or Alt-Tab presses!
I had fiddled around a lot on clac.exe but I'm still happy by the vid as there were some features which I didn't know but will be definitely helpful in the future. And nice work on the editing!
This is very cool. I did not even know that there were so many interesting things there. Thanks.
You left out the most important thing to know about Calculator: If you have it in Standard mode it will not use order of operations. That means that if you type in: 1+2*3= in Standard mode it will display the result to be 9 but in Scientific mode it will be 7.
That's just plain wrong in the standard mode. Order of operations is a math thing, not "scientific". It is pretty strange IMO that Microsoft should use an incorrect order of operations in the standard calculator.
@@coriscotupi I guess it's a emulation of how the cheap and simple calculators work. Try them yourself if you come by one in a drug store or supermarket.
@@RonaldMoD Yes, quite possibly so.
If I am not wrong, many of these options are present Windows 7's calculator with different UI. Also, it is currently an open-source program mentained on github and probably that's why received many new features at a good pace.
I really miss the win7 calculator's number editing feature where you can correct the numbers used for an arithmetic operation just by double-clicking on that operation line/row. This saves the trouble of retyping the entire operation just because of you entered one wrong number.
I just checked as a result of your comment. And your memory is good. Thanks for the info, since yes, I do spend some time on a Window 7 system. I've been doing a google search of the type what is 30 days after today every time I needed to know some date calcs.
The graphing calculator is new to 10/11.
I remember reading a vote on whether to add it or not.
I never liked the windows calculator because it never cleared the numbers properly for some reason. But maybe I was just using CE instead of C? It always annoyingly used the last function I used.
Being a system administrator for 15+ years, you would think that I would have know much of what you discussed. Nope! I can see some immediate use for some of what you pointed out. Thanks for bringing me up to date.
11:35
Binary SI prefixes are a fairly recent invention. For most of the history or computer science a "kilobyte" was usually 1,024 bytes (since that's the power of 2 closest to 1,000 and working in powers of 2 is more convenient for computers). This standard was very widely used (even officially by the IEEE). So even though we have binary prefixes now (the IEC officially published them in 1999) many areas of the industry continue to the decimal prefixes with binary values.
11:15, one of the only Imperial units we use, as well as inches and feet for height, and stone and pounds for weight
The programmer calculators is actually pretty useful for programmers, especially those who programs lower level or embedded stuffs. Basically it has to do with how many hardware make use of part of a byte/word to do something in order to save resource, and thus it's really helpful to know exactly how each bit goes in a whole byte/word.
Especially since C forces you to use hex even if it makes more sense to write a binary constant. Come on, even assemblers let you do that!
@@williamdrum9899 Some programming language/config file doesn't even allow any non-decimal literals. In fact if it were just hex value you don't really need a tool to do the conversion -- you memorize the binary to hex conversion and do it in your head, and that's basically the only reason hex value is a thing.
The explanation of Megabytes and Mebibytes is very helpful for a project I'm working on. Thank you!
When I took chemistry in the late 60's, I believe 1 ml equaled a little bit more than 1 CC because the standards for the length and volume were not precise. That has been corrected since then maybe when the definition of a meter was changed as a fraction of the distance from one of the poles to the equator to the distance that light travels in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
11:06 I'm from the UK and I have never used any of those weird UK units except pints. I always just estimate how much a teaspoon/tablespoon is using an actual spoon. Also, I have never heard of fluid ounces being used in the UK let alone having a different value to US fluid ounces, weird.
A imperial pint is 20 imperial fluid ounces. 160 fluid ounces/8 pints is an imperial gallon and 10 pounds of water. 1 fluid ounce of water has the mass of 1 ounce, 1/16 of a pound. Harmonious!
@@Rack979 yeah I think I'll stick with litres...
Excellent! You make learning fun! 👏👏👏☺️
6:35 10.3 actually means 10 degrees, 30 minutes, not 3 minutes.
As a programmer, I use the programmer mode all the time. However, I didn't know all of it's features. Thanks!
In the "old" calculator that got shipped before this one, the hex digits were on the scientific screen. Now, if you have done a calculation in the "normal" calculator and you want to convert to hex, when you switch to programmers mode, the value is lost. I wish they'd still shipping the old one besides this one.
The one thing I TRULY hate about the Windows calculator - the need to constantly switch between Scientific and Programmer. All they had to do was keep the binary/hex displays in scientific mode as well...
If you press and release ALT it will show you all the key combinations for that screen. This allows you to learn the ones for those menu options you thought didn't have one. :)
Also KB/MB/GB/TB etc have traditionally been in units of 1024 not 1000. I guess it's only a recent thing where 1000 has been a more accepted measurement, but I suspect it's hard drive manufacturers trying to maximize their numbers while minimizing the actual disk space they put in their drives (you can see your 2TB drive is not quite that big if you use the 1024 scale).
For 2 TB you lose almost 10% of what most people expect to get. But for 2 Megabytes you lose only 5% (since you get 1.9 Mebibytes). The more storage space you buy without knowing this difference the more you lose.
Metric prefixes have been measured in power of 10s since the introduction of the metric system in 1970s or so. It's not that recent tbh.
When we were measuring smaller sizes such as Kilobyte and kibibyte, differences were negligible. Even though it’s not the same for Terabytes the habit stayed I guess.
Is N the shortcut for Angles? I don't have an English Windows to check. Usually, it's the first available letter (but applications can also manually pick a letter by prefixing it with &)
Programmer calculator is great for networking as well.
See any ip address and binary for it. Useful in reading net mask and which network your ip is part of.
Or color codes in digital art
This was such a pleasant surprise!!! I teach 1st and 2nd year Mathematics at Cal Poly Pomona & watched the video out of curiosity. I was amazed at the versatility of Windows Calculator and amazed at how useful the information packed into this video conveyed.
So, no normal person needs the logic functions, and no normal, abnormal person needs the bitwise functions. Got it. 👍
Nah, they're super useful when dealing with encoding and networking while programming.
@@theairaccumulator7144 I am sure they are useful to normal, abnormal people, as well as abnormal, abnormal people.
Speaking as a normal, abnormal person myself.
Yay. A new Video! :D
Yes in the UK we absolutely use teaspoons and tablespoons for measurement, not only in home cooking but also in commercial kitchens.
Superb! Was knowing calculator literally by "face" only! Great job explaining everything in detail! So much behind that simple interface. Looking forward for more on other Windows apps revealing the "secrets"...
Waffle House has found its new host.
I knew most of what you covered here, but you did introduce some interesting items that were new to even me! I found this to be very informative and interesting, which is a reflection of your preparation.
I gotta say, I use the programmer section a lot, including bit shift, but I never realised it had different bit shift modes. And man, that's gonna come in handy! And I always forget that they introduced a graphing mode. I've just filed it under "nuisance" because I got so used to Alt+3 being the shortcut to programming mode, then they changed it. I always end up on Desmos, but maybe I don't need to. 🤔
Ooh, brilliant video, Joe! Knew some of the initial stuff but hadn't realised how many other converters and calculators there are!
9:53 You've got a pay grade? That's...surprising. With how high quality these vids are, you should ask for a raise.
Calculator is the hallmark of Windows for centuries together with Clock. I like the tone in your voice, trying not to laugh, because you know Thiol Joe, that you are a Mac.😂
9:48 Well, someone not getting monetized today !
0:22 I remembered that Task Manager also has this feature; I just tested it: Task Manager takes precedence over Calculator.
I remember your old trolling videos, so I'd always avoid you bc I'd see you in the thumbnails. To find out you've been dropping gems now! Glad you came around 🙏
Small point about the dms function you demonstrate. 10.5 converted to dms (10.3) is 10 degrees, 30 minutes not the '3 minutes' you described. Apparently the calc drops the trailing zero, which can be pretty confusing.
Yes the imperial system was revised from the Queen Ann imperial system that was taken to the US by the pilgrims. In 1824 the 'weights and measures act' changed the pint to 20oz (and hence the UK gallon increased as a result) and the change to the long ton which is 2240lbs, the original 2000lb ton hence forth was referred to as a short ton.
One of the most useful uses for bit shifting is multiplying by powers of 2. The arithmetic shift left is "multiplication by power of 2", and the number of bits shifted is the power. If you have 5, for example, and you shift-left by two bits, it's like multiplying by 2^2, so 5*4 = 20. This is how CPUs (technically, the ALU) improve performance calculating multiplications.
Kind of like how when you do modulo 2 in C your compiler does AND 1 instead
Wholy Crap ... Im 56 yrs old, quite tech savvy, been in communications/IT all my life ... I did not know the calc did all that crap, ok, add to bucket list, play with the calculator.... TY !!!! and THAT my friends, is why I like/subscribe to this guy.....
A 13 minute video about some random aspect of windows the devs probably haven’t thought about since windows released? Hell yeah!
Degrees and DMS are the most important functions for navigators. As a mariner this is very useful and not so many scientific calculators can convert for example 10.5 degrees, you want to add for example 6 minutes so the result should show as 10.6 degrees. I didn't know that windows calculator is capable of doing that but this makes waaay more easier some basic navigation calculations.
I can finally add "Windows Calculator power user" to my LinkedIn skill list ! Thanks !
One thing I miss about the old versions of the Windows Calculator is Statistics mode. It automatically saved every number into a list in memory, and there were buttons to calculate the sum, mean, and standard deviation. I do love the graphing calculator though, which more than makes up for the lack of statistics mode.