dry prose by Magnus Hultgren
Global Electronic Journalism, April 1998
Department of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMK)
Stockholm University
The definition of an online calculator which I have been using is that it should be an Internet page where you enter information which some sort of application processes and presents to you as a result. This means that there are a few different factors to judge: How easy is it to understand what to enter? How well does the page look? Does the result seem to be accurate? How is the result presented? Obviously, if I were able to calculate well enough without the calculator I would not need it, so the accuracy of the results will not be a main interest for me. Only if something seems very wrong will I comment on it.
In my infinite wisdom, I have divided the calculators into groups. Apart from providing the opportunity for me to show off with this tidy little list, this also makes it a little easier to find things in the text.
- Mathematics.
- Money.
- Physics.
- Time.
- Biology.
http://www.herald.com/archive/cyber/cybdocs/001610.htm
The article referred to a site that I had already seen among the first ten or twenty hits at Infoseek. A bit ugly, but nevertheless an excellent listing of 3,000 calculators, structured by subject. When I checked it out again a week later, it had over 7,000 calculators listed. Most recently it said "5,810", so maybe some of the 7,000 were duplicate links.
http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/RefCalculators.html
I have rated the journalistic use of each site on a binary scale from 0 to 1. Either the site could possibly be used to help a journalist in some way, or it could not. Who am I to go into details? (Disclaimer: This is not to be construed as journalistic advice. The use could in fact be the same as mine--to review them!) Most of the calculators can be used to check certain facts. This is what I mean by journalistic use.
The images
or 
will be shown next to each entry, along with a short explanation.
In order to be historically correct, I better start with pure math. I found several ordinary calculators which can help you with your sums on the net. But first, to get in the right mood, a quick look at an online abacus. I found a JavaScript version which worked fine but did not explain how to read it or how to use it for calculations (something which even the digit oriented calculators do).http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/~joerg/java/applets/Abacus/index.html
For obvious reasons, the journalistic use for an online abacus is quite limited indeed. One page has this to say as an introduction: "What you can expect at this page is a list of mechanical calculators, none electronic, and without printing device." It is a site dedicated to mechanical calculators and not their online counterparts.http://www.geo.tudelft.nl/mgp/people/gerold/rekenmac.htm
This site is not even interactive. It is only here for pointing out that mechanical calculators are "without printing device". A good, ordinary math calculator (i.e. which does ordinary math--it does not look like a calculator, more like a single text field for professional mathematicians) is located athttp://www.maths.utas.edu.au/People/Michael/Calculator.html
When you need a calculator which does a bit more than addition and subtraction, this is the place to go. Much more complicated is the "Newton's method" calculator, which wants you to ask your question in the form of an equation. But on the other hand it does handle more complicated commands, such as ln(x), sin(x), and cos(x). It has a parallel site with a single text field.http://www.math.scarolina.edu/cgi-bin/sumcgi/Newton.pl
http://www.math.scarolina.edu/cgi-bin/sumcgi/calculator.pl
Newton's method is probably good if you know what you want to do, and if you can figure out how to do it. In case you do not, there is always the other one. Another, simpler calculator even has an advertisement. One interesting feature is a switchoff button that sends you to the previous page in your browser (not generating another copy of it--as most other "Go back" links do). JavaScript.http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/7676/calculator.html
It is no better or worse than the small calculator which is already in your computer, but when you are surfing you might perhaps find it more convenient. A very similar version has some annyoing colors but not the switchoff button. JavaScript.http://doppler.unl.edu/users/bcorner/calc.html
Not as good as the previous one, but still a usable online calculator. Another very similar variety has the feature of leaving all numbers and signs on the line until you press =, thus making it a bit more interesting than the other two JavaScript calculators.http://www-personal.umich.edu/~adysart/Java/calc.html
A small calculator with an overview which makes it better than the built-in calculator on the Macintosh. An extremely simple calculator is located on a server in Sweden. It looks a little too spartan, but it works.http://www.exmandato.se/~martin/cgi-bin/calculator.cgi
You can use it. It is actually a bit better than the JavaScript calculators with fancy buttons, since it can do exponents (x to the power of y). No matter how I try (not that I did try), there is no getting around the help of Jumping Jehosaphat, the counting sheep. Tell her an equation, and she will jump the answer.http://www.dodds1.com/Java/Jj.html
Disregarding the Sheep Factor, you could use this calculator just as well as the JavaScript calculators above. But the animation makes it much too slow.
Back to the list. "HomePath" offers several calculators to figure out how much your mortgage will be and how expensively you can afford to live.http://www.homepath.com/calcs.html
Journalists who report about housing and rent could perhaps use one of these to make comparative calculations easier. The "International Salary Calculator" can tell you what your salary would be if you were to move. It claims to let you "compare the cost of living in hundreds of U.S. and international cities". Apart from the limited range of choice, it only tells me how much my present salary would be worth--and only in U.S. dollars.http://www2.homefair.com/calc/salcalc.html
This is a quite American tool which has few uses for journalists. Among the more complicated economic formulas is discounting. It is used to compare investments at a certain point in time by combining interest rate, expected inflation and so on. There is quite a lengthy instruction, but the counting is thankfully left to the machine. It is a drawback that it is so unclear what is to be entered where (and even why). The main page contains another three calculators for similar uses. One of them is the Lifecycle Calculator, which can compare the cost of paying x now or y later. Also rather complicated.http://www.ukbrp.co.uk/progs/discounting.html
http://www.ukbrp.co.uk/toys.html
http://www.ukbrp.co.uk/progs/life_1.html
Economy journalists may want calculators like this one, with pre-programmed formulas for interest or other areas, to check figures that companies claim to be good. The Lifecycle Calculator can be used for reporting on environmental issues. A few banking calculators are offered at HSH Associates. Once you fill in the right numbers they allow you to compare interest rates and provide different ways of planning your economy.http://www.hsh.com/mort_calc.html
Similar to the previous one, with six calculators to choose from. All about interest and loans. The Universal Currency Converter has about 70 currencies to choose from, and a user-friendly interface. (I know, I know, the word "user-friendly" is a whopping cliché--but in the case of economic calculators, this is a great benefit.) Updated every weekday, and the rates are probably reliable since they are given by the Bank of Montreal.http://www.xe.net/currency/
Checking updated currency exchange rates is something which economy journalists will always have to do. MEAP's Currency Conversion Calculator has only 35 currencies to choose from, and already on loading the page, three JavaScript errors are noted by the browser (Netscape version 2). Loading it a second time made the browser crash. But even before that, I could conclude that it was almost impossible to understand what to select and where to press. (However, when I used version 3, everything became clear. It even specified Swedish kronor as one of the six currencies it starts out with. This is probably accomplished by automatically checking where I am situated.) Updated every weekday, the rates originate at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.http://cyberstation.net/~jweesner/ccc/ccc.shtml
This calculator requires that you are using Netscape 3 or higher--if you are, it is good. It gives an instant overview of the dollar rate and then you can check other exchange rates. World Currency Exchange is also updated every weekday. Rates from Bank of Montreal. It has a nice look and although there are not a whole lot of currencies (only 22), it can be useful simply because of the excellent overview. By using pictures to display the numbers, they make it much harder to copy large amounts of information. Maybe it is on purpose.http://www.rubicon.com/passport/currency/currency.htm
A fine display of currencies. The only drawback is that it can probably be slow because of all the images and the fact that one currency is converted into all others simultaneously.Back to the list. Temperatures in the Unites States are given in degrees Fahrenheit, which has a somewhat complicated formula for conversion into degrees Celsius. The Temperature Conversion Calculator does that for you. It can even handle Kelvin, Réamur, and rankine.http://www.cchem.berkeley.edu/ChemResources/temperature.html
Many American reports which deal with temperatures of some sort, be it weather, astronomy, or a fire, will give them in Fahrenheit. This of course has to be converted in order to be useful in the rest of the world. One calculator that I found is directed towards the construction industry, but can be used by anyone who needs to change 39 miles into kilometres or feet. A second part helps you calculate how many cubic yards of concrete is needed if you have measurements of width, length, and thickness in feet--or of road pavement in gallons per square yard. That is a kind of calculator not really needed in a metric society, but for anyone trying to grasp the American way of counting it is probably quite good.http://www.graniterock.com/calcconv.htm
http://www.graniterock.com/calcconc.htm (A calculator for amounts of concrete.)
Again, this is a very good calculator if you need to transform American measurements. Unfortunately, it seems to have stopped working. Or maybe it only works on Netscape version 2. One of the most odd combination sites must be "Bali Online: The Ultimate Source of Bali (and Distance!) Info". It features a calculator which tells the distance between two places on Earth. As with several similar calculators, it helps to know the coordinates for the places you want the calculator to work with.http://www.indo.com/distance/
This can be used for example in foreign reporting, to compare distances abroad with local distances. There is one extremely good place to go for unit conversion. Charmingly, it claims to be "suitable for undergraduate students in their first or second year of physics. By the third year all of these conversion factors will of course be memorized."http://kreeft.intmed.mcw.edu/physics.html
Very comprehensive. Change ångström into fermi, a fortnight into seconds, or pints into cubic metres. Extra credit for the dull background which looks like a page from a physicist's grid notepad.Back to the list. The U.S. Navy has a calculator that can tell you the time for sunset and sunrise at all locations any day of the year, providing that you know the coordinates.http://aa.usno.navy.mil/AA/data/docs/RS_OneDay.html
It could be useful at least for the sunrise column in a paper. Sometimes it is good to know which day of the week a certain date was. There are a few calculators that help you with that. This is the one I like the best, since it displays the results in the same window.http://www.albion.edu/fac/engl/calendar/weekday.htm
Were those events in 1983 during the weekend or in the middle of the week? No wonder 10,000 people demonstrated, it was their day off. Or: 10,000 people thought it more important to demonstrate than to work. There is a Persian calendar calculator too, which tells you a certain date in the Persian calendar.http://www.payvand.com/calendar/
A more limited use, but still an interesting tool if you are writing about something in Persian history. A moslem prayer time calculator can also be of use. This one does however require that people know their coordinates, and it then calculates the right time zone.http://www.arabia.com/prayer.html
It is of very slight use, since it does not include a moslem calendar, but maybe it could come in handy somehow. An extensive moslem calendar calculator can be useful in many newsrooms.http://wwwcgi.umr.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/msaumr/hijri
Much more useful than a prayer time calculator. There are probably several Hebrew calendar calculators online. Here are two that I found.http://arrowweb.com/Shaike/calender.htm
http://www1.jewishgen.org/jos/josdates.htm
Since the Hebrew year is not equal in length to the Gregorian year, it can cause a bit of confusion. For instance, Israel celebrated its 50th birthday this week, on 29 April--but it declared independence on 12 May 1948. One time zone calculator which is rather poor because of neglecting to use the 24 hour system is the American Express World Times. But it is correct.http://americanexpress.com/travel/docs/resources/time/
In spite of its great fault. The Flight calculator can tell you where a plane is at this time. However, the airlines are not very numerous. Varig and Thai are not represented, for example.http://flight.thetrip.com/flightstatus/
Good for knowing when your correspondent is delayed, perhaps?Back to the list. There is also a calculator for people who want to see how fast they have to run in order to win a race. Or at least people in training for a race.http://www.runnersworld.com/misc/timecalc.html
Sports journalists who speculate about athletes in training might be interested in this calculator. Among the odd calculators is the one that computes your body surface based on height and weight. On this page are also a couple of calculators relating to pregnancy.http://www.cpmc.columbia.edu/resources/obgyntools/
These tools can perhaps be useful in reporting about health and maternity, but most likely there are better sources which are not calculators. There is a fitness calculator that is more of an interactive table. Enter your age, and it will tell you the best heart rate for exercise. The calculating is based on a formula, but since there are a very limited number of ages, there can only be 121 (try typing "125" and see what it says) results--of which the highest 40 and lowest 15 are probably rather wrong.http://www.afitnessbasket.com/thr.html
Maybe a way for sports or health reporters to at least find inspiration. In that case, I put more trust in a more complicated way of determining the correct heartrate for exercise. But even this one is not so different.http://www.stevenscreek.com/goodies/hr.shtml
Rather similar to the previous one, but with a larger number of fields to enter information into. Another advanced health calculator is the Healthy Body Calculator. State your gender, age and so on, and it will calculate for example whether you are the right weight for your height.http://www.dietitian.com/ibw/ibw.html
Health reporters might like this one as a complement to the usual tables and discussions about weight/height ratios. The "How well are you eating" calculator is very very poor indeed. But what could one expect?http://homearts.com/helpers/calculators/ddiary.htm
Even less useful than a prayer time calculator. Here, it is in addition difficult to know what unit they want to have entered. The step from mathematics to biology is short in one way. In another way, it is the step from Dust to Love. A combination of the two is The Love Calculator, which calculates the chance on a successful relationship between two people based on their names. In case anyone would take it seriously, it does have a disclaimer. (And not even Romeo and Juliet get more than a 98 % probability for a successful relationship.)http://www.lovecalculator.com/
What does it do? How does it do it? And above all: Why? I hesitate even to guess.Back to the list.Return to Magnus Hultgren's page.
Read the whole thing again. (Don't be ridiculous.)