Every now and then you run across an idea that makes you stop and say, “Ooh, I wish I’d thought of that!” Such is the case with the idea the folks at Omni Calculator came up with, which is to create an underlying architecture that can support myriad calculators for every conceivable task.

At the time of this writing, there are 863 calculators on the Omni Calculator site. Some of these are conceptually quite simple, like the Circle Calculator, which allows you to specify the units of, and enter values for, the Radius (r), Diameter (d), Circumference (c), or Area (a). As soon as you’ve entered any one of these, the calculator “fills in the blanks.” Other offerings are a tad more robust, like the Car Center of Mass Calculator, the computation of which has kept me up at nights.
Now, you might be saying, “Ho hum,” to yourself, but you’d be mistaken. First, the folks at Omni Calculator have put a lot of thought into this. If you visit the Circle Calculator page, for example, you’ll see this comes equipped with a wealth of circle-related resources, such as the definition of a circle, the properties of a circle, how to square the circle, and so forth. There are also fun facts, like “What’s the roundest country in the world?” (I’m not going to tell you — you’ll have to look for yourself).
The underlying implementation is also rather clever. All of the actual calculations are performed on Omni Calculator’s server, but you can click the “Embed” button associated with each calculator to be presented with a snippet of JavaScript that you can use to implant that calculator on your own website, thereby allowing you to increase visitor engagement on your site and get more social shares.
Since I’m not a natural programmer, I’m also impressed by the way each calculator accepts inputs in any order and generates any unknown values as soon as it has sufficient data to work things out. All-in-all, I think this is a great idea. I also don’t think it will be too long before Omni Calculator is snapped up by something like Google, in which case I hope they all make bushels of money. How about you, what are your thoughts on this?
One of my favorite calculator apps is called the Handyman Calculator and has a list of many different calculators for specific functions. You also did not discuss your calculator book?????
What, “The Definitive Guide to How Computers Do Math : Featuring the Virtual DIY Calculator” ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/0471732788 )? I was being modest LOL
I love calculators of every sort. I was a little disappointed though. I saw the Pizza calculator and assumed that it would definitively answer the question: what has more pizza, one 14″ or two 12″ pizzas?” It does provide valuable information, such as the cost per square foot, but I would have liked the area calculate as well.
I did find the area of a circle calculator, so in the end all was well.
“…what has more pizza, one 14″ or two 12″ pizzas?…” As you say, you can use the Circle Calculator to solve this conundrum, but I agree that it would be a good addition to the Pizza Calculator — I shall mention this to the folks at Omni Calculator
Hi Duane,
I’m Matt, the founder of Omni. The area is available in the advanced mode (there’ a button on the bottom). You can even see it split between the area occupied by crust and toppings :-). For reference: https://www.omnicalculator.com/food/pizza
Hi, Duane! The area is included in the advanced mode. There’s an “advanced mode” button below the calculators so you can access more features 🙂