Is there a calculator with LaTeX-syntax?

Question

When I write math in LaTeX I often need to perform simple arithmetic on numbers in my LaTeX source, like 515.1544 + 454 = ???.

I usually copy-paste the

Answer 1

For calculations with LaTeX you can use a CalcTeX package. This package understand elements of LaTeX language and makes an calculations, for example your problem is avialble on http://sg.bzip.pl/CalcTeX/examples/frac.tgz or just please write

\noindent For calculation please use following enviromentals $515.1544 + 454$ or \[ \frac{154.7}{25}-(289-\frac{1337}{42.}) \] or \begin{equation} 154.7/25-(289-1337/42.) \end{equation}

For more info please visite project web site or contact author of this project.

Answer 2

<> try the AnEasyCalc program. It allows to get the latex formula very easy: http://steamandwater.od.ua/AnEasyCalc/ :)

Answer 3

There is a way to do what you want just not quite how you describe.

You can use the fp package (\usepackage[options]{fp}) the floating point package will do anything you want; solving equations, adding dividing and many more. Unfortunately it will not read the LaTeX math you instead have to do something a little different, the documentation is very poor so I'll give an example here.

for instance if you want to do (2x3)/5 you would type:

\FPmul\p{2}{3}           % \p is the assignment of the operation 2x3
\FPupn\p{\p{} 7 round}   % upn evaluates the assignment \p and rounds to 7dp
\FPdiv\q{\p}{5}          % divides the assigned value p by 5 names result q
\FPupn\q{\q{} 4 round}   % rounds the result to 4 decimal places and evaluates
$\frac{2\times3}{5}=\FPprint\q$  % This will print the result of the calculations in the math.

the FP commands are always ibvisible, only FPprint prints the result associated with it so your documents will not be messy, FP commands can be placed wherever you wish (not verb) as long as they are before the associated FPprint.

Answer 4

You could just paste it into symbolab which as a bonus has free step by step solutions. Also since symbolab uses mathquill it instantly formats your latex.

Answer 5

As Andy says, the answer is yes there is a calculator that can understand most latex formulas: Emacs.

Try the following steps (assuming vanilla emacs):

1. Open emacs
2. Open your .tex file (or activate latex-mode)
3. position the point somewhere between the two $$ or e.g. inside the begin/end environment of the formula (or even matrix).
4. use calc embedded mode for maximum awesomeness

So with point in the formula you gave above:

$\frac{154,7}{25} - (289 - \frac{1337}{42})$

press C-x * d to duplicate the formula in the line below and enter calc-embedded mode which should already have activated a latex variant of calc for you. Your buffer now looks like this:

$\frac{154,7}{25} - (289 - \frac{1337}{42})$

$\frac{-37651}{150}$`

Note that the fraction as already been transformed as far as possible. Doing the same again (C-x * d) and pressing c f to convert the fractional into a floating point number yields the following buffer:

$\frac{154,7}{25} - (289 - \frac{1337}{42})$

$\frac{-37651}{150}$

$-251.006666667$

I used C-x * d to duplicate the formula and then enter embedded mode in order to have the intermediate values, however there is also C-x * e which avoids the duplication and simply enters embedded mode for the current formula.

If you are interested you should really have a look at the info page for Emacs Calc - Embedded Mode. And in general the help for the Gnu Emaca Calculator together with the awesome interactive tutorial.

Answer 6

Considering that LaTeX itself is a Turing-complete markup language I strongly doubt you can build something like this that isn't built directly into LaTeX. Furthermore, LaTeX math matkup itself has next to no semantic meaning, it merely describes the visual appearance.

That being said, you can probably hack together something which recognizes a non-programmable subset of LaTeX math markup and spits out the result in the same way. If all you're interested in is simple arithmetics with fractions and integers (careful with decimal fractions, though, as they may appear as 3{,}141... in German texts :)) this shouldn't be too hard. But once you start with integrals, matrices, etc. I fear that LaTeX lacks expressiveness to accurately describe your intentions. It is a document preparation system, after all and thus not very suitable as input for computer algebra systems.

Side note: You can switch to Word which has—in its current version—a math markup language which is sufficiently LaTeX-like (by now it even supports LaTeX markup) and yet still Google-friendly for simpler terms:

With the free Microsoft Math add-in you can even let Word calculate expressions in-place: