FishFace

Those are noun phrases formed of two nouns

Not really adjectival, but forming a noun phrase. It’s not productive because you don’t call just anything you put on the table “table x”.

I’m not in this picture and I don’t like it

Exactly!

Decide whether P = NP and get yourself an easy $1M. And another $5M for the other millenium prize problems.

Two years ago that was the go-to joke: “I was having trouble with this speech so I just got chatgpt to write it”.

Silence descends. @smartmanapps@programming.dev is nowhere to be found. A blissful sense of intelligence and sanity is restored, yet one thread remains loose: why the fuck was I talking about calculators this whole time?

Well, weary traveller to the depths of this rabbit-hole, who probably doesn’t exist, let me tie off that loose end. (OK I admit it, I’m just miffed I was never able to bring this back to The Point because Captain Denial over here can’t admit a single mistake)

The point is simply this: if a calculator works with some order of operations other than the normal one, so that in the operation of that calculator, 1 + 2 × 4 - 5 ÷ 6 = 1.16, and if this calculator proves useful for the solution of actual problems, there cannot be anything wrong with this set of rules.

Ages ago, Donald tried to claim that some scenario he came up with proved that left-to-right evaluation gave you wrong answers. One only needs to imagine how one would use an immediate execution calculator to tackle such a problem to see that his scenario does nothing of the sort.

So if you need to work out “Alice gave me 3L of juice, then Bob gave me two 5L cartons of juice, how much juice do I have?” You’d write down, with ordinary notation, 3 + 2 × 5 (and get 13), but on an immediate execution calculator you’d have to type in 2 × 5 + 3, but you’d still get the right answer of 13, because you know how to translate the scenario into the correct notation for the context. If you were talking to someone who insisted on ignoring ordinary rules of precedence and just proceeding left-to-right, you could write down the exact same string and they too would get the right answer of 13.

This is largely ahistorical, ignoring factors like:

• Availability of land
• The desire for privacy
• The invention and spread of the car making living further from places of work practical
• The desire for (ones own) outdoor space

The desire for privacy should, in particular, be obvious to the fediverse’s privacy conscious users: I don’t necessarily want my parents, grandparents, children, siblings, nephews and nieces all knowing:

• What I’m reading/watching on TV
• How my music practice is going
• What I’m having for dinner
• What time I go to bed
• When and with whom I have sex
• etc

There are many reasons why it’s not sustainable to focus on them as the main unit of housing, but the rise of detached houses corresponds to living standards rising to the point where it was something people could afford. It’s not a nefarious plot orchestrated by a secret cabal.

Not a meme

Pretty judgy about people’s hobbies there eh

Because it’s mostly boring soapboxing, rather than funny pikchor.

The OP’s screenshot, for instance, is a shit attempt at a joke that is only popular because it’s saying “AI bad”.

Oh so you do know what a meme is. Get in the fucking sea.

Oh right, so literally any image that gets copied belongs here? That’s what you believe? You’d be happy if I just screenshot my desktop showing nothing and posted it here?

We all know the original definition. We all know that’s not what it means now.

Is there a meme community on the fediverse that is active and bans screenshots of text?

P.S. I have no idea why you’re so skeptical that the Sinclair Executive can execute other than left-to-right, to the point of reading an example where the operations are executed left-to-right as evidence that it can execute in another order. But if you really cannot accept, due to some weird glitch in your programming or whatever, what about:

• The Monroe 20. The example is typed in as 1 + 2 × 4 - 5 ÷ 6 = and the result is given as 1.16 (repeating). That has been executed left-to-right; the result would be 8.16 (repeating) if executed with the usual operator precedence.

• The Montgomery Ward P300. An example is typed in as 8.3 + 2 ÷ 4 - 6.8 =, with the result given being -4.225. That has been executed left-to-right; the result would be 2 if executed with the usual operator precedence.

• The Omron 88. An example is typed in as 98 + 76 - 54 × 32 ÷ 10 =, with the result being given as 384. That has been executed left-to-right; the result would be 1.2 if executed with the usual operator precedence.

And to round it all out here is an issue of Electronic Design with an article (read p41, “Which Arithmetic”) that explicitly says that, in 1978, “all scientific calculators” except those of TI and HP used immediate execution. I dunno how many sources for this you need; I’m guessing you’ll find some way of deciding that when a magazine says “all scientific calculators except TI and HP” it means something completely different.

I mean, it’s just like I said: the basic, four-function calculators are all like this. Scientific Calculators used to all be like this, until technical developments were made that allowed otherwise. Feel free to browse more manuals on that website if you want, it’s quite interesting! If you were to, you’d have a better understanding of how these calculators - which I practised with in primary school, but which you, because you didn’t, assert don’t exist - actually work.

As an extra favour to you, I found the manual of the scientific calculator I had at home when I was growing up - this is what I used whenever I needed a calculator for homework until we were instructed to get a specific calculator, from some specific school year. That calculator was:

• The Casio fx-110. And what do you know, it has an example of typing the keys: 56 × 3 - 89 ÷ 5.2 + 63 = and printing the answer 78.19230769. The answer, if executed with usual operator precedence, would be 213.88461538.

So indeed, it’s not just basic calculators. So let’s go from here: there were millions and millions of calculators sold on which, if you type 2 + 3 × 5 it would give the answer 25.

Property, not Law, yes

• an old textbook (p78. Note, before quibbling about “products”, that even though it is expressed by juxtaposition, on page 1 this textbook says that, “multiplication is indicated by the absence of a sign” and we are in the multiplication, not the non-existent “product” section. The following exercises are explicitly multiplication.)
• a new textbook (p31) (Note that this time the law is expressed with × symbols. I also note that this textbook is the exact same publisher - CGP - that you have screenshotted in support of your own claims elsewhere, and indeed we used CGP textbooks at school.)
• and a teacher resource (p5) (published by the University of Melbourne for teaching primary and secondary students)

All call it the “distributive law”. The second textbook uses the term interchangeably with “distributive property” (p34). A five-second google can find numerous webpages, with an introductory paragraph which starts, “the distributive law, also called the distributive property…” and Encylopedia Britannica says too that they are the same thing. All three resources make no distinction as far as distribution goes between an expression written with a multiplication symbol like 2×(4+5) and one without like 2(x+3).

There is no difference between the two terms. I’d ask you for your reference, but I’m sure it’s in the same place as your references to your other nonsense that you tried and failed to find references for, so you needn’t bother: the evidence above is all that’s needed to dismiss this bollocks anyway. So stop repeating this stupid claim; nobody except a complete moron is going to use these two terms - which certainly sound like synonyms - to refer to two closely related, but different things. It’s asking for confusion. I don’t intend to discuss this point again.

who proved them, yes
from proof of same

So, you’re saying that, some time after 1928, a mathematician proved that a ÷ b × c = (a ÷ b) × c? Where was this result published? What’s the citation? Who was the author (or authors)? Or maybe you don’t have the citation to hand, but know the proof off the top of your head? Please, let me see it.

Does it not seem weird to you that such a basic aspect of mathematics as multiplication and division remained undiscovered until the 20th century? It’s hardly Fermat’s Last Theorem. If the meaning of a ÷ b × c were not a matter of choice but instead an open question, why were mathematicians using the notation at all when its meaning was not known?

And what of the textbooks like High School Algebra, Elementary Course (1917) which used the convention - err oops, rule - of performing multiplication first? See page 212, example 155. (Would be 810, not 90, if using strict left-to-right priority for division and multiplication)

If it were proved that this convention is wrong, then you will surely be able to find some serious error that flows from doing division in this order. After all, from any contradiction, you can prove anything.

Of course you won’t be able to do this because the question that you are saying was proved is “what does the sequence of symbols a ÷ b × c mean”. The meaning of sequences of symbols is not a fundamental aspect of the universe, is it. They could have different meanings to different people, in different places, or at different times, couldn’t they?

Nope! I covered the past as well Mr. Abysmal Reading Comprehension

“You are continuously wrong all the time” is in the present tense which, by your logic, only covers the present moment. “All the time” can no more change that than “never” can change that.

The second clause is only a guess from you, so I don’t really care about it.

There is no “=” button on the Sinclair Executive, and you aren’t saying the += means equals

Yes I am!

It can’t mean equals if part of its function is addition. “Add, and update the display with the current accumulated value” (which is what the button actually does) does not mean “update the display with the current accumulated value”. That is only part of its meaning; saying that something means only part of its meaning is simply not correct.

I’m saying omitting that keypress will evaluate a+bxc, instead of (a+b)xc.

I know you are. And that claim is not supported by the manual. That sequence of keypresses is not there.

All my calculators work the same way, even the one I have that doesn’t have brackets keys (though according to you it doesn’t have a stack if it doesn’t have brackets keys 😂 )

Still waiting for that video!

If you’d proven your assertion about the Sinclair Executive you would have:

• An example in the manual of it obeying order of operations in violation of right to left execution; or

Go ahead and type in a+=bxc+=, I’ll wait.

This was not an example in the manual of it obeying order of operations in violation of right to left execution, so you have failed to provide that evidence.

• The specifications saying how much stack memory it had; or

You know the stack isn’t hardware, right? Go ahead and find any calculator manual which specifies how big the stack is.

A stack requires hardware to operate; it requires memory. In early calculators, the stack was, in fact, a dedicated area of memory, because the amounts of memory we are talking about are so small that there was no way to dynamically assign memory to different functions.

You would not necessarily find the stack size in the manual, but you would expect to find it in the technical specifications. As an example of the kind of evidence you’re looking for this guide to using the HP-41 specifically mentions its 5-level stack. Note that this calculator was introduced in 1979, 7 years after the Sinclair Executive, and had 64 memory registers (in the original model; this could be expanded).

So, off you go.

• A video of someone using it to show it using order of operations in violation of right to left execution; or

You just tried to deflect this. I’m quite happy to post a video showing how my free calculator works, but you indicated you would dismiss it as a “chain calculator”. If you give any indication that you’re not going to dismiss it, I’ll happily provide one. For now, we are talking about the evidence you could provide.

• An emulator where you can see the same.

You’re arguing about calculators that precede the internet, and you’re expecting an emulator to exist for it

Weird thing to be skeptical of. Here’s a link to an emulator for the Sinclair Cambridge

Note that you can type in the exact same sequence of keys we’re talking about on this calculator: 2 + 3 × 5 =, and it will produce 25.

That is four different ways you could have demonstrated that this calculator has the capability to operate other than in immediate execution mode, and your responses were:

1. deflect
2. deflect, and an incorrect assertion about how early stacks worked
3. deflect
4. deflect, and an incorrect preconception about the emulation of early calculators.

Instead you have an example in the manual where the calculator executes strictly left to right,

No it doesn’t!

I’ll explain this once more. In the manual, the calculation we are discussing is rendered as 2.6 + 5 + x 9.1. We can tell the calculator executes this left-to-right because it gets the answer 69.16 and not 48.1. You are saying that, if a different sequence of keys had been pressed, then the calculator would do something produce 48.1 You have no evidence for that claim, because that sequence of keys is not in the manual, and nor is that result. I have evidence that it cannot happen, because it is impossible with the calculator’s hardware.

Oh look. it remembers the division whilst we enter other things!

Yes, the calculator has an operator register. Explain what I have said that you think this contradicts, and why. Note that it cannot remember more operators.

And look, it remembers four numbers. Also, (a+b)/(c+d) has three operands, and somehow it manages to remember all of them

No, it can’t. You enter four numbers, but it only remembers three (the one you’re currently entering, the accumulated total, and one manually stored number). You can see how it works from the diagram: at each step, the next number is calculated from those three values.

(a+b)/(c+d) has four operands (did you get operand confused with operator?).

It doesn’t need to remember them all for the same reason that when you add up 4 + 6 + 23 + 21 + 5 + 8 + 1 you only need to remember the running total (“the accumulator”), not all 7 operands in the sum.

Normally is a(b+c)+d(e+f)=, but sure, go ahead and explain to us how you can evaluate that “normally” without brackets and without splitting it up.

That’s not an evaluation, that’s an expression with an equals sign at the end, which doesn’t make any sense. The original expression has brackets, so I’m not sure what you mean by “without brackets” unless you want me to rewrite it in a notation that doesn’t use brackets. I just meant I’d first add b to c, then add e to f, then multiply those two values by their respective coefficients. No splitting needed.

Brackets are notation; RPN doesn’t use them

and so is the missing + in 2+3, and yet we know it’s there, which you have acknowledged you saw in the textbook 🤣🤣🤣

If we were talking about whether you need a plus-sign before a number to express that it is positive, the expression 2+3 and its evaluation to 5 would be sufficient evidence that you do not. Likewise, when we are discussing whether you need brackets to express that addition is to be performed before multiplication, the expression 2 3 + 5 x in RPN and its evaluation to 25 is sufficient to show that no brackets are needed. There are no brackets in the RPN expression 2 3 + 5 x, and its correct value is 25.

Nope, I’ve explicitly said they are required

You’ve said that the brackets can be “built-in” meaning, according to you, that there are no buttons for them. Look man, either the brackets buttons are required for evaluating complex expressions, or they aren’t. Make your mind up, then we can talk about this some more.

Bet you’ll deflect

says person

You know, every time you say “says person”, it actually is a deflection. So thanks for proving that one.

Just to recall: I asked, “if you mean something else than brackets buttons, explain what” and you did not do that. Indeed, you didn’t even quote that sentence in your reply where you seem to delight in quoting every single clause on its own. Interesting!

a problem such as (a+b)c + (d+e)f cannot be done as a simple calculation

that’s because it has no brackets keys dude

I’d write it out in rpn

Is it an RPN calculator?

No, it’s not, but you didn’t ask how I’d calculate it on this specific calculator, which I have always agreed can’t do it. Rather, you just asked how I’d calculate it without splitting it up, and without using brackets keys. I’d write it out in RPN, which does not require brackets keys, and does not need to split it up.

This was your point that you raised, genius, and you forgot what it was about. Embarrassing.

You’re saying that example tells you what would happen when the += key was not pressed a second time?

Nope

Finally!

No it doesn’t! It puts (a+b) on the stack

You really need to get better at explicitly distinguishing between strings of symbols and their numeric counterparts. What it does is it puts the result of adding b to a into the accumulator.

So I’m pretty sure according to you that proves that it obeys the order of operations, right?

Nope

But you insist that the Sinclair Executive obeys the order of operations. And MS Calc behaves the same as the Sinclair Executive. They behave exactly the same - if they don’t, find an example of the Sinclair Executive behaving differently. If they do, what’s your problem with MS Calc? It’s behaving the same as a physical calculator.

Guess what happens you you omit the circled keypress…

Well, it would be a guess, wouldn’t it. That’s all you have, a guess.

Nope. I have a calculator which behaves the exact same way

Try to keep up. We’re talking about the Sinclair Executive. Is your calculator one of those? No?! So indeed, you’re guessing about how the Sinclair Executive works without that keypress.

So why does ms calc work in the exact same way as an immediate execution calculator?

[not an answer to the question]

I’m just going to replace your deflections with some text like that, to show where you’ve failed to answer.

It’s right there in the manual that you have to do that second press to put it in brackets

And yet the manual does not say “you have to do that second press to put it in brackets” and there is no example without that second press to compare to soooooo… you’re guessing.

and yet, all different parts behaving in different ways.

Uh huh! Keep going!

I know you haven’t worked out where the brackets go!

[not working out where the brackets go]

Thanks for not playing!

We teach them that ab=(axb)

So, you do teach them the concept of implicit multiplication. You just don’t use the same words. Cool! Thank fuck for that!

Hey, you’re right, Cajori does talk about operator precedence.

Unfortunately, it talks about how the rules, especially for mixed division and multiplication, have changed over time. Supporting my point that these “rules” are not in fact rules of maths, but instead rules of mathematicians.

That is why Cajori includes them in a book about the history of how we write mathematics. No matter how you write multiplication and addition, they must always be commutative, associative relations which obey the distributive law; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be multiplication and addition. However, you can write them down in different ways, by using different symbols for example. Using different symbols for multiplication changes what a sequence of mathematical symbols means, but it doesn’t change what multiplication is. Doing the operations described by a sequence of mathematical symbols in one order or another order may break one set of rules of precedence, but those are rules made by mathematicians not by the fundamental working of the universe.

How do I know this? Because Cajori says that, at the time he was writing, there was “no agreement” over the order in which to perform divisions and multiplications if both occur in an expression. So here’s a question for you: do you agree with Cajori that at one time there was no agreement over which order to perform multiplications and divisions, or not?

If you do agree that there was no such agreement, do you then agree that, for there to be agreement now, such as there may be, that change must be through rules created by mathematicians, rather than by rules given to us from the universe itself? Because the universe certainly didn’t change in the meantime, did it?

If you don’t agree then that would rather expose your fetishisation of textbooks as hollow trolling, of course.

Oh god, don’t stop

You said every single post is wrong - present tense. So you only referred to posts I was writing at that moment, which wasn’t any. Weird of you, but thanks for agreeing I’m never wrong!

= Doesn’t mean equals

There is no “=” button on the Sinclair Executive, and you aren’t saying the += button means “equals”, you’re saying it omits the manipulation of the (non existent) stack. So your fake cackling makes no sense.

Which part of you’ve been proven wrong so there’s nothing further to discuss didn’t you understand?

The part where you haven’t proven anything, of course. If you’d proven your assertion about the Sinclair Executive you would have:

• An example in the manual of it obeying order of operations in violation of right to left execution; or
• The specifications saying how much stack memory it had; or
• A video of someone using it to show it using order of operations in violation of right to left execution; or
• An emulator where you can see the same.

You have none of that. Instead you have an example in the manual where the calculator executes strictly left to right, but you have said, without evidence, that a button on the calculator is preventing us from seeing its normal behaviour. And you call this “proof”! That’s the standard of proof I’d expect from a washed up maths teacher I suppose.

But it doesn’t end there, because you accept that the Sinclair Cambridge only executed left to right. So no, you haven’t proven anything.

says person contradicting the manual which says you cannot do it 🤣🤣🤣🤣

You can’t evaluate that expression without splitting it up? I can. Just fuckin’ evaluate it normally! That sentence is talking about the calculator’s capability, my unskilled friend, and if your mathematical ability is only as good as a calculator from the 70s it does explain things.

Yes, a calculator where the brackets are built-in, unlike this calculator 🙄

“The brackets are built in” is a nonsense statement concocted by a moron. Find a citation for it. Brackets are notation; RPN doesn’t use them.

What you’ve said by implication is that a calculator doesn’t need buttons for brackets in order to calculate a complex expression.

So, we understand it’s not a lack of brackets buttons holding back the Sinclair Cambridge (and Executive). What is holding them back then, is lack of a stack. If you mean something else than brackets buttons, explain what. Bet you’ll deflect.

says person ignoring that we’ve already established that they did have a stack.

If you’ve established it, you’d have evidence in the form of one of the four bullet points above. You don’t; you only have an example which doesn’t show use of a stack.

a(b+c)+d(e+f) is the example from the manual - go ahead and tell us how you can do it without brackets and without splitting it up.

I’d write it out in rpn but am waiting for you to agree that a notation which doesn’t use brackets… does not use brackets. I mean if by “it needs brackets” you mean “does not need any brackets” then sure, it’s only as dumb as your other ideas about English.

It’s right there in the examples!

You’re saying that example tells you what would happen when the += key was not pressed a second time? Do explain how an example tells you what happens in a situation other than the one in the example.

the proof is right there in the example that it doesn’t 🙄 A fact which you still haven’t admitted to

Nope, still not a proof of anything except that, in that example, the calculator executes from left to right. If you want to prove it could do something else, you have to actually do that. I’m waiting!

We don’t use terminology with things we don’t teach them

You don’t teach them that ab means a×b? Good grief, it’s worse than I thought.

“That’s pro–” oh do be quiet, I just told you I don’t care what you call it, and you told me it doesn’t exist and you don’t teach it to kids. You did not say “we teach this concept, but with a different name”. All evidence suggests you aren’t actually capable of understanding the difference between a concept and the name for that concept. Probably why you think English present tense cannot be used to talk about any time except the present moment.

they don’t emulate basic four-function calculators

Then find a basic calculator and take a video of it behaving differently, or find a manual with an example of it behaving differently.

I just realised, your issue with MS Calc in standard mode makes no sense - if you press 2+3+×5, it behaves exactly as the example in the Sinclair Executive manual. So I’m pretty sure according to you that proves that it obeys the order of operations, right?

No idea what you’re talking about

I washed myself recently, but you never wash yourself, do you?

Guess what happens you you omit the circled keypress…

Well, it would be a guess, wouldn’t it. That’s all you have, a guess. Because it’s not anywhere else in the manual so you’re just making up what you want to happen. But because the spec sheet for the calculator says it has no stack, we actually do not need to guess.

Do you understand yet what evidence means? It’s what I have, and you don’t because you’re forced to guess.

Which part did you not understand in the second one was a chain calculator

It’s an immediate execution calculator, just like ms calc in standard mode. So why does ms calc work in the exact same way as an immediate execution calculator?

Different programmers

And one project manager overseeing the behaviour, yes.

You know the order of operations rules predate use of Brackets in Maths by many centuries, right? How do you think they knew what to do, without brackets?

I know you haven’t worked out where the brackets go! Go on, try again, you’re very very very smart I’m sure you can do it!