Basic Calculator
Perform simple arithmetic: add, subtract, multiply, divide, or raise to a power.
Your Details
How It Works
- Enter your first number.
- Choose an operation.
- Enter your second number and press Calculate.
Formula Used
Good to Know
- • Division by zero is undefined.
- • The power operation raises the first number to the second.
Important Notes
- • Results are rounded to 4 decimal places for display.
A Starting Point for Quick Math
This calculator covers the five most common arithmetic operations for quick, one-off calculations — addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and raising a number to a power. For anything more specific, the dedicated calculators elsewhere on this site handle those cases with purpose-built inputs and explanations rather than requiring you to translate the problem into raw arithmetic yourself: percentages, fractions, ratios, and unit conversions each have their own calculator built around the specific way people actually think about those problems.
The five operations here are also the foundation everything else in mathematics builds on — every more advanced calculation, from compound interest to loan amortization, ultimately breaks down into some sequence of these same basic operations, just applied many times in a structured way.
Order of Operations Matters for Multi-Step Math
This calculator handles one operation between two numbers at a time. For longer, multi-step expressions, standard order of operations applies: exponents are evaluated first, then multiplication and division (left to right), then addition and subtraction (left to right). This convention — often remembered by the acronym PEMDAS (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication/Division, Addition/Subtraction) — ensures that any two people evaluating the same written expression arrive at the same answer.
Breaking a longer expression into individual steps here, in the correct order, will still get you to the right final answer — the key is making sure multiplication and division steps are calculated before addition and subtraction steps whenever an expression mixes them, rather than simply working left to right through every operation.
Definitions You'll Need
- Order of operations (PEMDAS) — the standard convention determining which operations in a multi-step expression are evaluated first.
- Exponent (power) — repeated multiplication of a base number by itself a specified number of times.
- Operand — the numbers an operation is applied to (in "5 + 3," both 5 and 3 are operands).
Step-by-Step Example: A Multi-Step Expression
To calculate 24 + 8 × 3 correctly, using order of operations:
Step 2: 24 + 24 = 48
Note that calculating left to right without respecting order of operations — (24 + 8) × 3 = 96 — gives a completely different, incorrect answer for this expression. The two results differ because parentheses weren't actually present in the original problem; order of operations exists precisely to remove ambiguity about which operation happens first when none are used.
Operation Reference Table
| Symbol | Operation | PEMDAS Priority |
|---|---|---|
| ^ | Exponent (power) | 1st |
| × / ÷ | Multiply / Divide | 2nd |
| + / − | Add / Subtract | 3rd |
Errors Worth Avoiding in Basic Arithmetic
- Ignoring order of operations — calculating strictly left to right instead of applying multiplication/division before addition/subtraction.
- Dividing by zero — mathematically undefined; always confirm the denominator isn't zero before dividing.
- Confusing exponent order — 2^3 means 2 multiplied by itself 3 times (2×2×2=8), not 2×3.