[Solved] How to change the zeros at the end of long numbers

[commonman123]

Hi there, first question on this board, hope someone can help! ^^

I'm doing a project for my math class involving very large numbers, but they're NOT supposed to be written in scientific notation, but in standard form instead. I noticed though that any number after the 16th digit is instead replaced with a zero. Kind of an annoying auto feature, seeing how I don't want those extra numbers rounded off like that. Is there a way to keep the original number? For example, 2^64 is supposed to be 18,446,744,073,709,551,616. That's the number I want displayed. Instead I get 18,446,744,073,709,600,000.

Thank you very much!

[MrProgrammer]

Hi, and welcome to the forum.

Calc, and many other spreadsheets, perform calculations to about 15 significant digits of precision. So all Calc knows about 2^64 is that it is approximately 1.84467440737096 times 10^19. Calc does not know that it is exactly 18,446,744,073,709,551,616. If you ask Calc to display digits beyond …709 it will provide a 6 and then zeros because no more significant digits are available. If you want to work with large integers, you will need to use something other than a spreadsheet. A web search should locate some suitable software for you.

If this answered your question please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

[commonman123]

Ah, I see. Well, thank you very much for the help ^^

[jrkrideau]

Ah, I see. Well, thank you very much for the help ^^

Perhaps Maple or Mathmatica can help but I believe that they are rather expensive. There probably is an OpenSource equivalent but I don't know a name.

Edit: Apparently there are relatively inexpensive Maple and Mathematica licences for students.