TI-30Xa: Logarithm Bug Corrected (From Datamath Calculator Museum)

On top of Datamath's web page (http://www.datamath.org/,  Retrieved May 24, 2016), the website announced that a logarithm bug for several Texas Instruments has been addressed and corrected.  There is a big box on top the page which will you lead you to the article.  

This affects the basic level (one-line display) scientific calculators, from the TI-35X and TI-36X from the early 1990s to TI-30Xa of the 2010s.  The bug is present when you calculate the natural logarithm of numbers between 1.000000001 and 1.01.

Datamath reports that the bug has been fixed in 2015; hence the TI-30Xa and TI-30 ECO RS (the latter not in TI's United States product lineup) manufactured 2015 and after are working properly.

In testing the two TI-30Xa's I have (manufactured in 2011 and 2013, I think), it seems that they have the bug.  I might buy a new revision to test it.  

Update (5/25/2016):  I purchased a new TI-30xa today (manufacture number? L-0216M, the package had a date of 2015) to test whether the bug has been resolved.  I put this one and an older version (K-0513K – 2013) to the test.  To get the full decimal result, I put both calculators in scientific mode.  Judging by these results, the bug appears to have been resolved. 

A comparison between TI-30Xas.  The left is the 2016 (new) manufacture, the right is the 2013 (old) manufacture.  The results on the left are correct.  

Eddie

This blog is property of Edward Shore, 2016