Welcome calculator fanciers to another
Numberphile calculator unboxing. I'm Matt
Parker, and today I'm going to be looking
at this! This is a real classic of the
genre this is the Casio FX series, this
is an Fx-85GT Plus. And it's not only on
the packet it is written right across
the top of the calculator I mean but; I'm
getting ahead of myself we're not inside
the packet yet. Let's just have a look at
what's promised: on the back there's a
full breakdown of the calculator, tells
you where all the buttons are;
predominantly as you can see on the
front of the calculator. And then it
mentions several the functions, most of
which you don't actually get in the
calculator so this is basically saying that
there are other calculators which are
better than this one. It's a unusual
thing to say on a product, that you're
not buying the best one, but if you look
at the top here this is not the UK's
number one scientific calculator it's
the UK's number one scientific
calculator brand - not this specific one.
But that mean it can do a lot - you can
see on here it's got 260 functions, that
is a big number of functions. It can do
prime factorizations; it's got
recurring decimals, very exciting, and
it can verify your expression. So if you
look particularly excited or very
surprised at a calculation it could
verify that expression. And you can see
here it comes with a three-year
guarantee; it's guaranteed that the
fundamental laws of mathematics will not
change within the first three years of
purchasing this calculator. After that
all bets are off: 1 may become a prime
number, dividing by 0 may be allowed, we
just don't know.
Okay so let's pop this open and see what
actually happens. So again we'll get our
handy scalpel; as you can see I'm making
one incision on the top corner, very very
carefully slicing towards myself so
I keep a good view of the blade. We'll now
cut down the long- oops; the long side like that.
Being careful to not cut through any of
the instruction or other materials
inside. And then we'll come around this
last corner. One final dangerous cut; we
are through most of the packet and none
of my fingers. Alright this now hinges
open, there we go, okay there's the
calculator. Ooh the instructions are
protected here; in case you get so
excited opening it there's a risk of
fluids being splashed on the
instructions they come a little packet
there. If we put- oh wow there's a proper
stapled booklet here. How to initialize
the calculator, so that's a lot of text
there for how to press the on button.
Handling precautions; because if you
don't have a firm grip it might slip out
on a fast calculation corner. How to read
the display, if you've not yet learnt to
read. In fact; if you can't read
possibly buying a calculator is getting
a bit ahead of yourself, I recommend
learning to read before learning how to
use a calculator. I mean there's a lot here
and I could spend the entire video
reading this, which believe me is
tempting, but we will leave that for
later on. And then now these are all the
bits that they forgot to put in the
booklet when they first wrote it and so
they had to put them on an extra piece
of paper and then they forgot to put
some bits into this piece of paper which
is why there's another piece of paper. In
fact there are several; I mean frankly
whoever's in charge of coming up with
the instructions should be fired. Ok so
let's get rid of all that and have a
look at the calculator itself. Oh look at
this- ok so it comes with a taped on back.
If only I had a sharp implement to remove
that! Okay so we'll cut through the bit
there, we'll cut through the tape there.
And this should now slide off, very nice.
And then this little bit of plastic here;
okay I have no idea what that is. If anyone
has any idea what this is for please do
let me know; I can only assume it's
something vitally important so I'm going
to very very carefully fold it up and
put it back in the packet for when I
later realize what I'm meant to use that
for. Okay the actual calculator, here we
go. There's a variety of powers, in fact
there's two ways to power it. If you look
very very closely at the panel you can actually
see that there are four different panels
there so that is the first inaccurate
mistake on the calculator. If we switch
it on- oh look at that, the whole display
leaps in. It starts off in degrees, again
a bit of a risk there, and we can fit one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,
ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen- oh the
digits- they're just scrolling off the
other side. This- this can fit a lot of
digits and we're only using the top
row. I mean there's a lot of potential
here. I mean if it wasn't for the fact that
now mobile phones have shown you how
good screens can be you'd be impressed. I
mean if this was the mid-90s that would
be a fantastic screen on an electronic
device. Let's see how the accuracy goes;
so one way to test the accuracy is we'll
try 1 divided by 9, which should
give us a ninth, oh it's actually just
written a ninth. And if we try
multiplying that by 9 it should of
course give us 1 back, that's very good.
It's also very good for converting
surds. So let's say you want to know the
square root of 17, you simply type square
root of 17, you hit equals and it tells
you that it's the square root of 17. Very
insightful there Casio, the square root
of 17 is exactly equal to the square
root of 17 - marvellous. Now through all of
this you might be wondering, look this is
a good calculator but it's a bit neutral.
How can I express my feminine side? Casio
has got you covered with the pink! Look
at that, the pink Casio! Exactly the
same, FX85 GT, only this time it's
the plus pink. This one here was just the
plus, this is plus nothing. This one here
is plus pink. If we crack that one open,
and if I'm not careful it's going to be
plus blood. Okay
once we are in here, okay, we can see that
it is identical there's all the same
instructions, the front of it is the same
it's got that same very important bit of
plastic. If I cut through the identical
pieces of tape there we now have the
same, exactly the same, calculator that
does all exactly the same things except
it is surrounded by a pink face. At last
a calculator that caters to people who like
the color pink. Now know what some of you
are thinking, wait a minute. This this
is a little bit sexist, how on Earth
could you have a pink calculator and no
other colours? Well that's fine, anyone who
thinks that's too sexist they do of
course have a blue calculator. There you
are, this is this
entire Casio range. If you are male, female
or non-identifying then you have- or you
wish to be neutral, if you think that
gender doesn't come into mathematics
then of course you can use the classic
there. They're all otherwise absolutely
identical, they all fit in the hand the
same way. Final scores for the Casio
fx-85GT plus in both the neutral, blue and
pink models. Overall I give the displays
9.5, they are very good. Functionality
8; accuracy 10, you cannot fault the
precision. Ergonomics a 9, fits nicely in
the hand; cred 9, although it does depend
heavily what model and what gender
you're pairing up. And finally for
durability...
For durability we've run it over and
it's still got- I mean obviously the
gendered ones haven't fared so well but
the every person calculator, still still
ticking along. - (Brady: Score?)
I have to give that
a 10. That brings us to a grand total of
55.5 which is an amazing average
score of 9.25. [Preview] I feel like-
I mean the main feature of this is the
fact that you can attach it to your
wrist, you can you can strap it on. And
that is very important, very few
calculators can do that. In fact I've got
another for comparison Casio calculator
here, and if you try and balance that on
you it's incredibly difficult to do
calculations on your wrist.