[nimbius]

speaking from experience working in a truck repair shop, I quit using calculator in windows as it was rather unreliable. if im calculating inner diameter or outer diameter for a part, or doing tooth math for machining a new bull gear, ive often encountered wildly different values in calculator from what a machinists handbook tells me. Ive even had an old-timer warn me about different depth and feed rate calculations that calculator has never done right. This is simple shop math, but i think we're calling it trigonometry these days.

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/04/04/annou...

[orbital-decay]

This is an issue with any math-related tool in general, including the specialized software, where bugs are much much more sophisticated. Most App Store/Microsoft Store/Google Play apps can't be trusted even for simple square root and trigonometry calculations.

[copperx]

I know it's totally overkill, but I use Mathematica for even simple arithmetic computations. I assume that the developers have ironed most of the obvious bugs.

[pkaye]

I think Mathematica uses the GNU multiple precision arithmetic (gmp) library itself in many cases.

[acqq]

> doing tooth math for machining a new bull gear, ive often encountered wildly different values in calculator from what a machinists handbook tells me

Please some example, I'm curious, as Microsoft claims that they use the "infinite" precision library there.