4 ms·
> \sin{30}. Radians or degrees? Probably the writer means degrees, but there's no way to tell. I once had a professor that insisted that sin(30) meant sin(30 p
by Denvercoder9 6y ago
> \sin{30}. Radians or degrees? Probably the writer means degrees, but there's no way to tell.
I once had a professor that insisted that sin(30) meant sin(30 pi) in radians, with the pi being implicit. Unsurprisingly, it was the worst class I've ever taken.
- wcarey 6y agoAbsolutely terrifying. How did he communicate with other peer mathematicians?
- Denvercoder9 6y agoI honestly don't know - it was an intro level physics class.
- gowld 6y agoMathematicians understand how to read definitions of notation. If all of your trig is fractions of pi, writing pi redundantly everywhere is not useful.
- wcarey 6y agoIs that commonly done?
- renewiltord 6y agoIt is not. Though it wouldn't be too hard to adapt, I think, if it was noted at the beginning of a text. For it to take, it would have to power some influential result, sort of like how the summation convention in tensor notation works (something that infuriated me as a kid).
- saagarjha 6y ago…but that's not a fraction of pi?
- gowld 6y ago30pi is a fraction of pi.
- tome 6y agoAre you sure it wasn't sin (30 pi / 180), because that actually makes sense.