I would like to teach a class on the "magic" behind the calculator, so I would like to generate a list of "algorithms" for how a calculator computes the things we want it to. I will get the ball rolling:
- Addition and subtraction is done via binary addition and subtraction.
- Logarithms and exponentiation is done via Taylor series.
- I'm not too sure about multiplication and division, do calculators do binary multiplication or do they use logarithms?
I hope that teaching students the mathematics behind the calculator would trigger a reaction everytime they use one in the future.