HP HP-35 - Operating Limits and Maintenance; Accuracy Details

SECTION 2
OPERA TI NG LIMITS
ACCUR ACY
The accuracy of the HP-35 depends on the operatIon
being perfo r med. Elementary operations such as add, sub·
tract, multiply, divide, reciprocal. and square root have a
ma~imum error of ± one count m the tenth (least signifi·
ca ll) d igit. Errol'S in these operations are caused by
r ounding answel'S to the tenth (least sig"l 'f icant) digit. An
e ~ ample of round off error is seen wh en evaluating
(Vs)2. Rounding V5 to 10 signif icant digits gives
2.236067977. Squaring this number gives the 19 digit
pr oduct 4.999999997764872529. Round ing the square to
10 dIgIts gi ves 4.999999998. If the ne ~ t larger app r o ~ i 
m ~tlon (2.2360671378) i ~ ~quorod, the .coul t' o
5. 00000 00 022370 0 8484. Rou nding this numbe r to 10
si gn if icant digits gIves 5.0 0000 00 02. There simply is no
te n dIgit number whose square is 5.0 0 00000 0 0.
The accuracy 01 the remaining operations (trigonome tr ic,
logarithmic and exponential) depends upon the argument.
T he answer that is displayed will be the correct value for
an input argument with in iN counts in the tenth least
si!Jliticant digi t of the origmal input argument.
Values lo r N are:
OP ERA TION VALUE OF N
10gX.lnX,ande
X
2
trigonometric
3
x
y
4 fo r X.and 7 fory
21