It's working for me from the UK. I can't imagine why Google would want to geolocate this. Perhaps they've only partially rolled it out to some of their datacenters?
Implementing % button, Google chose an approach which is more mathematically sensible but arguably less obvious to users. For Google, 10% just an alias for 0.1. This means that if you want to calculate how much a dress with a price of $299 costs with a 20% discount, type in
299 + 299 × 20%
Perhaps, this is exactly how you think % should work.
Microsoft, however, chose to make “%” key more user-friendly, perhaps sacrificing some consistency. Windows calculator tries to use the last computed value as “the whole”. Therefore,
299 - 20%
will give you how much a $299 dress costs with 20% discount, and
299 + 5% - 20%
will help you calculate 5% tax before applying the discount.
I just tested it and the percent key in the Google calculator doesn't work like the one described in the linked article. It really just divides by 100.
which I think it is exactly how I would expect it to work: If I ask a question, I expect the system to guess what I really want to know and give me an answer.
500 + 1% typed right in calculator displays "500 + 1% = 500.01" in the calculator.
500 + 1% typed in the search box displays "500 + 1% = 505" in the calculator too.
It's probably due to the search result being returned by some server at Google while the other one is computed locally through some client-side JS logic. I think they'll notice and unify the behavior at some point.
You can type your calculation as a google query and you'll get the result. This calculator is designed for people looking for a mouse- / touch-based UI.
It seems to be the correct UI choice - If you start typing, your input goes into the search field, and the calculator app is purely a mouse/touch application. Looks like a thoughtful UX choice.
iOS 6 brings those over (at least on the iPad 3, presumably because it made more sense than #ifdef'ing those bits out of Siri). I keep meaning to just write a non-crap Android stopwatch, because using my iPad as a 10" stopwatch is just silly.
Sadly not, as its "timer" is actually just setting an alarm for x minutes later. That also means that you lose precision of seconds. If it's 5:22:36 and you tell it to set a timer for 10 minutes, it'll set an alarm for 5:32:00, not 5:32:36.
Yes, click-through rate. If an unusually large percentage of users click on a result instead of engaging with the calculator then the calculator probably shouldn't be there.
This is Google trying to outsmart you. It thinks you're searching for Sept. 11 if you type 9/11. It happens quite regularly with other queries, add a = sign to force the calculator.
So 299+5% and/or 299+(5%) to figure the sales tax does not work at all, it just says "Your equation has an error. Please correct it." and no hint to what the error is.
69 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadRelevant post by Raymond Chen:
“How does the [Windows] calculator percent key work?”
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2008/01/10/70474...
Implementing % button, Google chose an approach which is more mathematically sensible but arguably less obvious to users. For Google, 10% just an alias for 0.1. This means that if you want to calculate how much a dress with a price of $299 costs with a 20% discount, type in
Perhaps, this is exactly how you think % should work.Microsoft, however, chose to make “%” key more user-friendly, perhaps sacrificing some consistency. Windows calculator tries to use the last computed value as “the whole”. Therefore,
will give you how much a $299 dress costs with 20% discount, and will help you calculate 5% tax before applying the discount.Sadly, Google thinks
which is really not that helpful.3 + 5% = 3 + 0.05 = 3.05
This article is about Windows calculator and I'm comparing two different approaches.
Google went with simple 10% = 0.1 here, like you say.
But a calculator should work like a calculator.
500 + 1% typed right in calculator displays "500 + 1% = 500.01" in the calculator.
500 + 1% typed in the search box displays "500 + 1% = 505" in the calculator too.
It's probably due to the search result being returned by some server at Google while the other one is computed locally through some client-side JS logic. I think they'll notice and unify the behavior at some point.
Yes, and no physical calculator I have ever seen would give 500.01 for "500 + 1%".
But when on a non-touch device, even if you click on the calculator, focus remains on the search input, that seems like a massive UX failure to me.
(Equally annoying, Android doesn't have a simple stopwatch/timer built in.)
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=calculator
(The link is setting the language to English for just that search.)
Thanks.
I'll stick with my 17 year old TI-92 though.
http://www.google.com/search?q=9/10
But not:-
http://www.google.com/search?q=9/11
Also seems like it could be much smaller, since it's following this increasing trend to devote less and less screen real-estate to search results.
http://www.google.com/search?q=9/11=
bc -l
or for those who like rpn
dc
:)
If anyone knows or figures out a url option to make it do the old inline math, please let me know ?
"=255" appears as one of the suggested searches.
I would like you to check out the calculator I built:
http://herocalc.com
It's pure Javascript, has a full parser/tree-builder to process equations, allows you to define functions and variables, and is very fast.
It also installs a search handler so you can do calculations from your search bar.
Sorry, not ready for prime time
2, x, 2, =
You get 4.
Press = again, you get 8, and so on.
As insignificant as this may seem, lack of this in a calculator is a complete showstopper problem for me.