4 ms·
I remember playing around with these weird sin and cos functions whose return values seemed to lack any readily discernible pattern. After some experimenting I
by Sharlin 7y ago
I remember playing around with these weird sin and cos functions whose return values seemed to lack any readily discernible pattern. After some experimenting I ended up plotting something like
x=a*sin(t)
y=a*cos(t)
and was delighted to realize that the coordinates traced the arc of a circle! Not a long time earlier I had wondered how to write a program that displays an analog clock… The connection to right-angled triangles was revealed to me only later, although in retrospect they are obviously two sides of the same coin.
- cellular 7y agoI made a whiteboard robot to teach/experiment those equations. It's fun to fill a whiteboard with patterns and let people wonder how they were made: https://sites.google.com/view/wbr https://sites.google.com/view/wbr
- lakkal 7y agoThat's my story, too - learned about sine and cosine by playing around with plotting the results in Applesoft Basic. Wasn't until the following year that I learned what they're for in Trigonometry class.