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Explain RPN

History

Jan Lukasiewicz developed in 1920 the Reverse Polish Notation as a possibility to write mathematical expressions without parentheses and brackets. RPN stands for Reverse Polish Notation.

Arguments for RPN

With the rpn-method you first input the values and store them in the stack pressing enter. Then you give the operator that has to be applied to the values. This is equivalent to the way e.g. you add values by hand by first writing the values to paper and finally adding them. Compared with the arithmetical method - most of the pocket calculators use - the rpn-method has a lot of benefits:

• The result of any operation is immediately shown and written to the stack. So you can see and access all intermediary results and not only the final one.
• The intermediary results will help you to check the calculation and to avoid mistakes
• RPN saves time and keystrokes as you never will need parentheses. You will perform the calculation in the logical sequence and define the priority of the operators by yourself.
• It is no more necessary to clear the active memory before starting a new calculation (With the arithmetical method you may have input an 'old' value followed by e.g. the multiplication operator. Trying to calculate '4+5' will then result in the product of the 'old' value with 4 increased by 5)

If you frequently use pocket calculators you should have a look on the advantages of the rpn-method. Rpn is very easy and can be learned in just a few minutes. On a long-term basis you may save a lot of time using rpn.

Once you are used to work with rpn you will probably never switch back to the arithmetical method and substitue your arithmetical pocket calculator with a high quality rpn calculator. RPN pocket calculators may offer a broad range of facilities e.g. vector and matrix algebra, complex numbers, solving equation systems and differential equations, infinitesimal quantities, integration, symbolic processing, statistics, data analysis, programming,...

Some explanations how to open the rpn-calculator and how to perform an arithmetical calculation should help you to start with rpn.