Sunday, May 11, 2014

Scientific Keyboard Challenge, Revisited

On this post:,

I have issued a creativity challenge: design a scientific calculator using only 25 keys.  No restrictions.  I came up with a couple ideas.

Before I present mine, I want to show a great landscape design by Picky Bart.  Thanks for posting PickyBart!:


The first one is an RPN keystroke programmable calculator:

The next one is a graphing calculator. (or at least an attempt at one).  Since only 25 keys are allowed, this prevents the use of an ALPHA key.  So, soft keyboards via dialogue had to be implemented instead.

RPN/Linear/Math IO
a+bi, r<q, REALS
Language (dialogue bar)
Data:  Edit, Name, Delete
Stat: n, Means, Sums
Dist:  Norm PDF, Norm CDF; iNorm, Bin PDF, Bin CDF, Pois PDF
Pois CDF, Chi PDF; Chi CDF, iChi
List:  { }, sum, average, prod; seq, sorta, sortd, augment;
Dchg, size, position
Regr:  Vars (a, b, c, r), Regr (Lin, Log, Exp, Pwr, Inv, Quad, Cubic,
Matrix:  [ ], det, trans, eigen; eigvect, size, position, ref; 
rref, spec radius, rank, trace; LQ, LSQ, LU, QR
File:  New, Edit, Delete
Input:  " ", Input, Prompt, Menu
Output:  Clear, Display, Output, Graph
Tests:  ==, >< , >, >=; <, <=, and, or
IFTE:  If, Then, Else, EndIf
Loop:  For, Step, Next; Repeat, Until, While, Wend
Ctrl:  Pause, Stop, Error, Subr
String:  length, sub, left, right; >expr, >string, position, augment
Frac:  PDQ, a b/c, exact, approx
Hyp:  (hyperbolic)
Prob: x!, nCr, nPr, gamma; rand, randint, randnorm, dice
Cmplx: abs, arg, real, imag; >Polar, >Rect
Parts: IP, FP, round
Calc:  derivative, integral, S, P 
Constants: (24)
Conversions: (12 pairs)
Mark: b, o, h, d
HEX: A, B, C, D; E, F
Logic: and, or, not, xor; xnor, shift right, shift left, 2's
RPN: swap, roll down, roll up, drop; over, pick, view, dupn
Solver: New, Edit, Delete, Solve
ALPHA: - enter message and press enter
CAPS (Keyboard), lower (keyboard), Symb (! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) { } and math symbols), Greek 

I may have forgot something but I think I got all the basics covered.
This post is property of Edward Shore  - 2014


  1. how come yours looks so much better than mine? LOL! Great work.

    1. Turns out doing the design using Excel and Word does wonders. I'm not too good at hand drawings. LOL


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