expr will give you a quick way to do basic math from the CLI. Make sure you escape things like * and leave a space between operators and digits. Show Sample Output

To do hex to binary: echo 'ibase=16; obase=2; 16*16' | bc # prints: 111100100 To do 16*16 from decimal to hex: echo 'ibase=10; obase=16; 16*16' | bc # prints: 100 You get the idea... Alternatively, run bc in interactive mode (see man page) Show Sample Output

Read all lines using decimal marker as point, then add all them up and outputs the result. Show Sample Output

In this example, file contains five columns where first column is text. Variance is calculated for columns 2 - 5 by using perl module Statistics::Descriptive. There are many more statistical functions available in the module. Show Sample Output

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Same as the seq/bc solution but without bc.

Calculate pi from the infinite series 4/1 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 + ... This expansion was formulated by Gottfried Leibniz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz_formula_for_pi I helped rubenmoran create the sum of a sequence of numbers and he replied with a command for the sequence: 1 + 2 -3 + 4 ... This set me thinking. Transcendental numbers! seq provides the odd numbers 1, 3, 5 sed turns them into 4/1 4/3 4/5 paste inserts - and + bc -l does the calculation Note: 100 million iterations takes quite a while. 1 billion and I run out of memory. Show Sample Output

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_triangle This one's for bartonski. Enjoy. 132 characters. I'm sure we can do better. Note: after row 64 we overflow integer maths. Show Sample Output

More readable version of factorial calculation using standard desktop calculator instead of bc.

I can't put the last ^2 with seq, so I reverse it to delete the last +N. So for doing sum(N^2) you have to do sum((N+1)^2). Must be a better way. Show Sample Output