# Calculation in "Today's value" field for Whittle Down goals

**URL:** <https://forum.beeminder.com/t/calculation-in-todays-value-field-for-whittle-down-goals/11235>\
**Category:** Bugabee\
**Created:** [November 7, 2023, 5:50pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/calculation-in-todays-value-field-for-whittle-down-goals/11235 "2023-11-07T17:50:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![zamomin](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/zamomin/32/5252_2.png) [@zamomin](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/zamomin)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2023, 5:50pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/calculation-in-todays-value-field-for-whittle-down-goals/11235/1 "2023-11-07T17:50:42Z")

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I have a feature request: I want to whittle down a digital collection of unread manga chapters. The collection is so big that it takes up several pages where one page contains 20 comics. So I started a Whittle Down goal. Since the “unit per day” field in the classic “do more” goal can do calculation I assumed that Whittle Down goals can as well, so I typed in “ \* 20\>” and expected it to spit out the result just as it does with the unit per day field (or the value field for new data entries). But it told me “Today’s value must be a number”.

Obviously, this is not a huge deal. It’s a simple calculation I can do in my head now that I’m forced to. But still it’s a bit of friction in the UI where I didn’t expect it to be, so I thought it was worth bringing it to y’all’s attention.

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**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2023, 9:33pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/calculation-in-todays-value-field-for-whittle-down-goals/11235/2 "2023-11-07T21:33:12Z")

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I agree, allowing more arithmetic would be quite nice. But what does "` * 20>`" mean?

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**Author:** ![zamomin](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/zamomin/32/5252_2.png) [@zamomin](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/zamomin)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 9:40am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/calculation-in-todays-value-field-for-whittle-down-goals/11235/3 "2023-11-09T09:40:47Z")

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Sorry, “\* 20\>” was a leftover from a previous draft. I meant to write “\<number\_of\_pages\> \* 20” 😬

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**Author:** ![k1rsty](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/k1rsty/32/3165_2.png) [@k1rsty](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/k1rsty)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 10:02am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/calculation-in-todays-value-field-for-whittle-down-goals/11235/4 "2023-11-09T10:02:37Z")

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Just mentioning this here, as I remembered it while reading this, rather than going to the effort of finding a better thread to report it to @theospears (sorry!). But in the iOS app I’d like to be able to input data as a fraction e.g. “14/75” which I can do on the website for the same goal.

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**Author:** ![theospears](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/theospears/32/4692_2.png) [@theospears](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/theospears)\
**Post date:** [November 13, 2023, 1:09am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/calculation-in-todays-value-field-for-whittle-down-goals/11235/5 "2023-11-13T01:09:12Z")

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I filed this as a request in the app’s issue tracker for you: [Support entering datapoints as fractions · Issue #418 · beeminder/BeeSwift · GitHub](https://github.com/beeminder/BeeSwift/issues/418)