8 Scientific Functions

The functions described here perform trigonometric and other transcendental calculations. They generally produce floating-point answers correct to the full current precision. The H (Hyperbolic) and I (Inverse) flag keys must be used to get some of these functions from the keyboard.

One miscellaneous command is shift-P (calc-pi), which pushes the value of ‘pi’ (at the current precision) onto the stack. With the Hyperbolic flag, it pushes the value ‘e’, the base of natural logarithms. With the Inverse flag, it pushes Euler’s constant ‘gamma’ (about 0.5772). With both Inverse and Hyperbolic, it pushes the “golden ratio” ‘phi’ (about 1.618). (At present, Euler’s constant is not available to unlimited precision; Calc knows only the first 100 digits.) In Symbolic mode, these commands push the actual variables ‘pi’, ‘e’, ‘gamma’, and ‘phi’, respectively, instead of their values; see Symbolic Mode.

The Q (calc-sqrt) [sqrt] function is described elsewhere; see Basic Arithmetic. With the Inverse flag [sqr], this command computes the square of the argument.

See Prefix Arguments, for a discussion of the effect of numeric prefix arguments on commands in this chapter which do not otherwise interpret a prefix argument.