Numeric Formats - HP 39g Master Manual

Numeric formats

The choices for 'Number format' are shown
on the right. Standard is probably the best
choice in most cases, although it can be a little
annoying to constantly have 12 significant
figures displayed. In
large and very small numbers are displayed in scientific notation.
The Fixed, Scientific and
Engineering formats all require you to
specify how many decimal places to display.
The screenshot right shows Fixed 4, which
rounds everything off to 4 decimal places. Of
course, you can change the 4 to any other
number you want.
A setting of Scientific notation ensures that any results are displayed in
scientific notation. Of course, the calculator's idea of scientific notation may
not be the same as yours. Since the calculator has no way of displaying
powers as superscripts, a result of
3.203E4. The alternative of Engineering notation is very similar to
Scientific, except that powers are always displayed as multiples of 3.
This is done to allow easy conversion
in the Metric system, which also works
in multiples of 1000.
The screens right show the same two
numbers displayed as in turn as; Fixed 4,
Scientific 4 and Engineering 4.
mode, very
Standard
3 203 10
Calculator Tip
If you have Labels turned on when you
on a graph then you may end up with axes whose numeric
labels are horrible decimals (see below right).
⋅ ×
has to be displayed as
4
31
in (or out)