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Fun with the Google Calculator

By nine4mortal in MLP
Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 12:42:50 AM EST
Tags: Internet (all tags)
Internet

Everybody's favorite search engine has a fun new feature: the Google Calculator. For example, try entering 1 + 1 into Google. This is the most trivial of examples, of course, but a little bit of experimentation proves it's a full-featured scientific calculator.


It supports all of the basic mathematical operations, although it does not appear to support logic ("and," "or," "not") or bitwise operators (such as "<<", ">>", "|", and "&".) However, it does do some simple natural language-type parsing. Interestingly, "1 and 1" actually does yield an answer, but "and" is treated as addition, not logical and.

It handles several different bases. For example: here is 42 in binary, octal, in hex, and 0x21 in decimal. You can use "base n" notation, but I have not found any bases that work other than 2, 8, 10, and 16.

It knows mathematical constants like pi and e.

It knows the basic mathematical functions such as trig functions, hyperbolic trig functions, the natural logarithm, log base 10, and square root. It also knows about some somewhat more advanced mathematical operations such as factorial, the gamma function, "choose",

Okay, so far so good, but pretty boring you say? It gets better.

It handles imaginary numbers, and it's standard functions all seem to work with complex arguments.

It knows a bunch of scientific constants including:

Given this list, it probably knows many other values, although I have been somewhat surprised to find out some of the constants it does not know.

It also knows about units. For example, here is the radius of the Earth in: feet, inches, miles, nautical miles , meters, km, light years, au, angstroms, furlongs, and Smoots. (Yes, for those of you who do not know, the Smoot is a unit of length.) My personal favorite way to test a unit converter is to ask for Planck's constant in slug-acres per fortnight, but Google's also happily does stone-Smoot-parsecs per fortnight. This is not just an idle curiosity, of course. It knows there are 2 pints in a quart, 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon, and about 3.79 liters in a gallon. (This should be useful to those of you who like the many food related articles here on K5.)

But for those of you who doubt this calculator can solve all of your life's problems, you will be happy to know that it knows the answer to life the universe and everything, even in binary. However, it still does not seem to know the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow is.

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Poll
The Google Calculator
o Sweet! 75%
o Lame! 4%
o Whatever... 20%

Votes: 165
Results | Other Polls

Related Links
o Google
o search engine
o Google Calculator
o 1 + 1
o mathematic al operations
o natural language-type parsing
o "1 and 1"
o in binary
o octal
o in hex
o in decimal
o "base n" notation
o pi
o e
o trig functions
o hyperbolic trig functions
o the natural logarithm
o log base 10
o square root
o factorial
o gamma function
o "choose"
o imaginary numbers
o complex
o arguments
o The radius of the Earth
o The mass of the Sun
o Avogadro's number
o gravitatio nal
o constant
o The speed of light
o Planck's
o constant [2]
o feet
o inches
o miles
o nautical miles
o meters
o km
o light years
o au
o angstroms
o furlongs
o Smoots
o Smoot
o Planck's constant
o slug-acres per fortnight
o stone-Smoo t-parsecs per fortnight
o 2 pints in a quart
o 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon
o 3.79 liters in a gallon
o food
o related
o articles
o answer to life the universe and everything
o binary
o not seem to know
o air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow
o Also by nine4mortal


Display: Sort:
Fun with the Google Calculator | 139 comments (136 topical, 3 editorial, 0 hidden)
Big fucking deal (1.47 / 21) (#1)
by A Proud American on Thu Aug 14, 2003 at 09:34:33 PM EST

I know those answers, too.  Why the hell would I use a textual index engine to find them out?  Most calculations are easy enough to do in my head (or at least get a pretty good estimate).

I'd rather you post nude pics of yourself, personally.  But whatever floats your boat I guess.

+1, Section.

____________________________
The weak are killed and eaten...


+1, Excessive use of... (5.00 / 3) (#2)
by GavalinB on Thu Aug 14, 2003 at 09:38:41 PM EST

Smoots. Well done.
---
The Future is Prologue: Join Our Sagas Today!
-1 There's two geek fetishes that disgust me (2.46 / 43) (#3)
by Tex Bigballs on Thu Aug 14, 2003 at 09:38:51 PM EST

One is manga porn the other is google. For fucks sake google needs to get over itself already. Answer to the meaning of life=42 HURRR YUK YUK YUK. I'm sure whatever part of douglas adam's brain that is currently inside a maggots tummy right now would think that google is a gay search engine for fags.

Those aren't imaginary numbers (4.00 / 6) (#7)
by fremen on Thu Aug 14, 2003 at 11:19:51 PM EST

Everyone knows that "i" is current and that "j" is the square root of -1. Google doesn't seem to respond to "j", though. For shame. Electrical engineers everywhere are out of luck, I guess.

Cute, but not exactly MACSYMA (4.33 / 6) (#13)
by KWillets on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 01:17:39 AM EST

Expressions with multiple roots are forced to one value, eg square root of 2 has two possible results, fifth root of -1 has five, etc.

Still, if I were on slashdot, I'd be telling everyone that I'm throwing my calculator away because google has perfected Mathematics.

Looks great (4.11 / 17) (#14)
by Mike Green Challenge on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 01:42:20 AM EST

I've been playing with the google calculator for over an hour now. Man this is without a doubt the answer to all my life's troubles.

Not only can I do things that I could do with a $12 Texas Instruments calculator from CVS, I can now do them using a $1000 computer along with a $40/month internet connection. Not only that, but I can do them while having a giant image of a multinational corporation stuck in my face while performing these calculations. That, my friend, is what marketing people would call "branding."

Along with google's acceptance into mainstream internet speech being used as a verb even, this is dissapointing news. I suggest that all you k5ians spend a few days, maybe even 4, undergoing a WILDERNESS CHALLENGE along with a TI or Casio basic calculator. You will be able to perform all the calculations you want while pondering the meaning of life and jerking off onto a rotted out tree.

Cheers!

--
Aspies for Ron Paul

It may know the Answer (4.80 / 5) (#22)
by anonimouse on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 03:32:40 AM EST

but does it know the Question?
~
Sleepyhel:
Relationships and friendships are complex beasts. There's nothing wrong with doing things a little differently.
Division by zero (4.50 / 4) (#24)
by jdy on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 04:24:28 AM EST

The behaviour on division by zero is a bit odd:  it just reverts to a normal search.

Strange measures (4.00 / 4) (#25)
by julian7 on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 05:02:33 AM EST

It seems that Google knows about attoparsec (1 meter in attoparsec) but doesn't seem to know about microfortnight, which has VMS roots (1 second in microfortnight).

Buggy? (4.66 / 3) (#26)
by carlossch on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 05:25:47 AM EST

try this:

(100 degrees Celsius) + (1 degree Fahrenheit) = 355.927778 degrees Celsius

It looks like someone confused Kelvin and Celsius here. The right conversion rules are:

  1. C = 273.15K
  2. C = 373.15K
  3. F = 0C
  4. F = 100C
So, 100C + 1F = 100.55C, or approximately 373.7K. We arrive at Google's figure if we use Kelvin for Celsius: 100K + 1F = 355.927K... Kelvin and Celsius are both centigrade scales (originally they were defined to have 100 degrees between melting and boiling point of water. Currently they are measured in a different way, can't recall how), but you have to subtract 273.15 from the Kelvin scale to get the Celsius scale, and to convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius and back, we use

9/5C + 32 = F

Carlos
He took a duck in the face at two hundred and fifty knots.

Running out of ideas? (3.50 / 4) (#28)
by jotango on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 05:47:57 AM EST

Sometimes I have the feeling google is running out of ideas. I mean, the search engine is great. But the scanned catalogs? The web screen show (try the labs)? Google by phone? The News is quite good, even though I don't use it. But who needs a calculator in a search engine? Which normal user would actually think of entering a sum in the box? Strange.

Altavista et al. got killed by their complicated and slow search interfaces. Will that happen to google?

It's also a spelling checker (4.50 / 4) (#33)
by MichaelCrawford on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 07:57:33 AM EST

See:

Google has already helped me know I should mention both abbreviations of the Serial Bus Protocol 2 in my resume, because significant numbers of people abbreviate it each way. (sbp2 or sbp-2.)

Of course, Google verifies that your spelling corresponds to common usage, rather than what the dictionary says, but that's actually how the dictionaries are really supposed to get their spellings. The advantage of Google is that its spellings stay up to date.


--

Live your fucking life. Sue someone on the Internet. Write a fucking music player. Like the great man Michael David Crawford has shown us all: Hard work, a strong will to stalk, and a few fries short of a happy meal goes a long way. -- bride of spidy


Pointless searches (4.66 / 3) (#35)
by squigly on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 08:30:12 AM EST

Speed of light

It doesn't seem to know the distance from the earth to the sun though (unless you ask it for 1 au).

Real use for me (4.00 / 1) (#39)
by Meldric on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 10:00:55 AM EST

While I can't see myself using Google as a calculator I can see myself using this as a reference. If I couldn't remember a constant this would be a great place start (granted it already was a great place to start). It doesn't really extend the features of Google for me, but it does enhance them. Overall I could see some real value and use out of this.

The future (3.60 / 5) (#42)
by RyoCokey on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 10:50:47 AM EST

"Google became fully self aware on Oct 17, 2004."

Seriously, it appears to be getting some serious feature creep. Will this decade see people being asked what OS they run: Windows, Linux or Google?



farmers don't break into our houses at night, steal our DVDs and piss on the floor. No
Kelvin v. Celsius (2.50 / 2) (#45)
by virtualjay222 on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 12:58:16 PM EST

It is my understanding that the Kelvin scale is set so that 0K corresponds with absolute zero. The Celsius scale, as was stated, has the same spacing (for lack of a better word) between degrees, but is set so that 0șC is the freezing point of water at 760 torr.

When defining temperature as the average kinetic energy of a group of molecules, the Kelvin scale is much more logical (how could you have negative energy?). I would guess that the Celsius scale was in used first, but that is only speculation. Also, I recall having heard that the Celsius scale was origionally inverted (water boiled at 100șC, froze at 0șC). Can somebody verify any of this, or is my imagination acting up again?

---

I'm not in denial, I'm just selective about the reality I choose to accept.

-Calvin and Hobbes


Lame (4.00 / 2) (#46)
by the on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 01:01:27 PM EST

Your search - integrate(exp(-x^2),x) - did not match any documents.

--
The Definite Article
This (3.60 / 5) (#50)
by applespank on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 01:54:06 PM EST

is the greatest thing I have seen in my entire life. I have to go change my underwear, now.

Oh sweet (3.66 / 3) (#54)
by LittleZephyr on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 02:24:17 PM EST

I discovered, well not really causes it's kinda obvious now, but the little search box in firebird has google (i knew that), but of course the calculator works in that too, which is really handy isn't of having to find one in my house or browse ages through the start menu.
(\♥/) What if instead of posting that comment,
(0.-) you had actually taken a knife and stabbed
("_") me in the eye? You murderer. ~ Rusty

This rocks. Some cool stuff. (5.00 / 2) (#58)
by awgsilyari on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 05:07:46 PM EST

How fast is Earth hurtling around the sun?

Search for: square root of (mass of sun times gravitational constant divided by 1 au) in miles per second.

For some reason I think it's really cool that you can spell everything out:

What is the seventy second root of three billion?

Does it know Euler's identity?

What is: e to the (i times pi)

If my body was totally converted to energy, and that energy was expended over an entire day, how much power would that be?

156 pounds times speed of light squared per day

How much energy does a 2.4 GHz photon carry?

Planck's constant times 2.4 gigahertz

Dude... this fucking rocks.

--------
Please direct SPAM to john@neuralnw.com

Cute, but.. (4.00 / 1) (#60)
by mikael_j on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 05:12:45 PM EST

I'm still waiting for an irc bot or website that matches Maple in functionality, whenever I feel the need to use a "calculator" it's usually because I want to double-check something that your average $30 calculator or irc bot with a math script can't handle..

/Mikael
We give a bad name to the internet in general. - Rusty

Still Cool (4.00 / 2) (#63)
by rowanxmas on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 05:32:34 PM EST

I think it is just cool that Google can cram so much funtionality into one text box.

another calculator (3.00 / 3) (#64)
by jmd2121 on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 06:41:48 PM EST

I found a console based calculator
in PERL a while back that accesses
all the computational functionso PERL,
plus supports variables and references
to previous calculations. very useful.



see
http://bowser.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/scripts#console_calc




What's with 2Ah? (2.00 / 1) (#69)
by Fen on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 07:36:30 PM EST

Wouldn't it be great if enough people died and enough books were burned that nobody would have to deal with the stupid 2Ah thing? It's like the geeks' version of superficial retorts towards deeper issues. As if the mainstream "lighten up" isn't bad enough.
--Self.
First and third primes multiplied? (4.00 / 1) (#70)
by Fen on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 07:39:10 PM EST

How is this an interesting base? Seems silly to include it.
--Self.
Does anybody know... (5.00 / 1) (#71)
by damballah on Fri Aug 15, 2003 at 08:39:59 PM EST

How many significants this can handle? Is it normal 32-bit precision?

Do they use the round-to-nearest method (IEEE spec)? This very interesting, just because it involves floating point arithmetic.

*******************************************
" I apologize for this long comment. I didn't have the time to make it any shorter. " - Blaise Pascal

" zombie accounts promote an unhealthy interest in the occult among our younger readers. " -

i tried... (5.00 / 3) (#82)
by rmg on Sat Aug 16, 2003 at 12:58:28 AM EST

riemann zeta(23333657) and it didn't work.

i don't know about anyone else, but i expect my scientific calculators to at least have riemann zeta function for positive integers...

_____ intellectual tiddlywinks

Dave's Quick Toolbar (5.00 / 1) (#84)
by sawndust on Sat Aug 16, 2003 at 01:59:25 AM EST

Those of you who get off on this type of stuff may want to look at Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar if you haven't seen it. Little free tool for Windoze users that has a boatload of these command-line type time savers. Pain to learn them all, but once you memorize some, it becomes second nature. Pretty useful.

Almost on topic (none / 0) (#92)
by mumble on Sat Aug 16, 2003 at 12:15:13 PM EST

While we are talking about calculations, and stuff, I have a question:

I know the first 20 digits of Pi off by heart, and am tempted to learn the next 20. But I figure I might try a different tack. What are the first 20 hexadecimal digits of Pi, and what are the first 20 binary digits of Pi?

Thanks for any answers.

-----
stats for a better tomorrow

I am not impressed (5.00 / 2) (#104)
by Roman on Sun Aug 17, 2003 at 01:47:09 AM EST

Not impressed until that thing answers the ultimate question (and I tried asking.) Do you know the question? The last question?

Can entropy ever be reversed?

Similar to Alltheweb (none / 0) (#108)
by gbraad on Sun Aug 17, 2003 at 07:26:04 AM EST

Google is trying to create a similar functionality as Alltheweb has. Both have unit conversion... Although, the mathematical already look more advanced.

1+1 example



Frink (none / 0) (#111)
by eliasen on Sun Aug 17, 2003 at 02:55:10 PM EST

I was a bit dismayed to hear about Google's calculator. After all, I've been working on a free calculating tool/programming language called "Frink" which does a lot of this stuff, and a whole lot more:

Frink documentation

There's a simple web interface here:

Web interface

Frink also does language translations, timezone conversions, date/time math (so you can find out when you're one billion seconds old, or figure out how many days until Christmas,) currency conversions, historical currency valuation for the dollar and the pound (so you can, say, find out how much 10 shillings in the year 1840 would be worth today, etc.)

It's also a full-fledged programming language so you can write powerful programs and get the answers right. (And you can use it when you're offline!)

I was a bit relieved to find that some of the units of measure in Google aren't right (e.g. acre, probably because they don't know the difference between a statute mile and the "international" mile,) and some even have the dimensions wrong. Yikes!

I envy them a bit, though. They get to pick which calculations they actually do, so their grammar doesn't have to be unambiguous. I don't have that luxury. :)

But who can compete with the almighty Google? :)

Problem (none / 0) (#114)
by Pseudonym on Sun Aug 17, 2003 at 10:22:37 PM EST

I understand that it may not understand obscure units, but metric measures are a bit of a glaring omission.

So it will happily tell me what a cup in millilitres is (and it does note that this is a US cup), but not a metric cup in millilitres.

It's nice to know hbar in btu fortnights though.



sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
It doesn't do rods to the hogshead! [nt] (none / 0) (#115)
by polyglot on Sun Aug 17, 2003 at 10:49:28 PM EST


--
"There is no God and Dirac is his prophet"
     -- Wolfgang Pauli
‮־
Let us connect google with this... (5.00 / 1) (#120)
by statusbar on Mon Aug 18, 2003 at 03:16:18 AM EST

Connect google to The Inverse Symbolic Calculator at CECM at SFU, and maybe we will get some real self-awareness happening! Hint: Type 1.41421356 into the text box and click Run....

--jeff++

American vs normal spelling (4.00 / 1) (#121)
by Repton on Mon Aug 18, 2003 at 05:03:47 AM EST

Number of litres in a gallon.

Number of liters in a gallon.

Cool.


--
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle..

TIme for a Pentium-style recall (5.00 / 1) (#124)
by KWillets on Mon Aug 18, 2003 at 11:19:40 PM EST

Sine of (Googol times Pi).

It seems to get sine(2 * Pi) correct, however.

G (3.00 / 1) (#132)
by skintigh on Wed Aug 20, 2003 at 06:29:25 PM EST

G in furlong^3 per slug year^2 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=G+in+ furlong+cubed+per+slug+year+squared&btnG=Google+Search ANd this one had a better ring to it: hbar in (slug hectares) per fortnight http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=hbar+ in+slug+hectares+per+fortnight&btnG=Google+Search

WPI's cheer, almost (3.00 / 1) (#133)
by skintigh on Wed Aug 20, 2003 at 06:43:42 PM EST

E to the X dydx E to the X dx http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=cos+s ec+tan+sin+3.14159&btnG=Google+Search http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=e+i+s quare+root+pi&btnG=Google+Search http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=Fight %27em+fight%27em+WPI%21&btnG=Google+Search

How about... (4.50 / 2) (#134)
by Chancellor Martok on Thu Aug 21, 2003 at 05:46:41 AM EST

...a currency converter?

-----
Chancellor Martok  in Sydney, Australia
"Castrate instead. That can surely rehabilitate. I did it volunatrily, and my grades went up!"  -- Sen

DoS of Google.com failed... (4.00 / 1) (#135)
by rulethirty on Thu Aug 21, 2003 at 04:54:57 PM EST

My attempt to DoS google with a division by zero failed :o(. Har Har!

Fun with the Google Calculator | 139 comments (136 topical, 3 editorial, 0 hidden)
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