Ditch The Pocket Protector With FooPlot, An Online Graphing Calculator

Graphing calculators have a sexiness only true nerds can understand, but should that be you, check out FooPlot, a sleek online graphing calculator that's fast and easy to use.

The FooPlot graphing calculator can plot up to five functions at the time, scrolls up and down the axes, and allows you save your graphs as image files. As an added bonus, FooPlot can even take its input straight from the url, for instance this link will take you to a graph that plots the five equations listed in the URL params.

In addition to plotting your equations online, FooPlot has an experimental feature which allows to export your graphs in a variety of image formats including, .eps, .svg, .pdf and .png.

FooPlot also has features that let you determine intersections and roots for your equations, though the FAQ adds some caveats to that functionality:

FooPlot uses Newton's method for finding roots and intersections, which has some limitations. For example, it will not be able to find the root of sqrt(x), non-differentiable functions, or functions that exhibit fractal behavior. In addition, if two functions are too close to each other, beyond the precision of the variables used in the underlying code, bogus roots or intersections may be found. Thus, it is highly recommended that you use your analytical skills to ensure that the results you see make sense.

FooPlot may not be a necessity for everyone, but it's certainly the best graphing calculator implementation we've seen.

FooPlot supports most major browsers, though Safari users are out of luck for the time being.

[via Digg]