The Sinclair Scientific had the typical Sinclair quirks. It had trig functions. But you could ask it to calculate (say) the arcsine of something greater than +/-1. Now that is perfectly OK - the answer is a complex number. But the Sinclair knew nothing of complex numbers, but it tried valiantly anyway. After a number of minutes with the display flashing fitfully, it returned an answer. A nonsensical answer of course.
The HP's handle it perfectly of course. For the arcsine of 1.5 the HP15C returns 1.571 - 0.962i to three figures. It also handles factorial of a non integer (technically a gamma function) so 3.65! returns 14.37. Matrix inversion - no problem, so solving linear equations is straightforward. Just love these calculators!
The HP's handle it perfectly of course. For the arcsine of 1.5 the HP15C returns 1.571 - 0.962i to three figures. It also handles factorial of a non integer (technically a gamma function) so 3.65! returns 14.37. Matrix inversion - no problem, so solving linear equations is straightforward. Just love these calculators!
