4 ms·
Well this isn’t very fair. Yes, triangles have very little to do with the true nature of sin and cos. It’s also true that they are the basic building blocks of
by jacksnipe 4y ago
Well this isn’t very fair. Yes, triangles have very little to do with the true nature of sin and cos.
It’s also true that they are the basic building blocks of cyclicity.
But to say they are not geometric tools is dishonest. They instead show us that geometry is deeply connected to many other, sometimes-surprising, areas of mathematics.
- mjw_byrne 4y ago"triangles have very little to do with the true nature of sin and cos" <- this is what I mean.
- jacksnipe 4y agoSure, but circles are geometric too :)
- mjw_byrne 4y agoAbsolutely, but IMO circles have as little to do with sin and cos as triangles do :-)
- shadowgovt 4y agoThat seems ahistoric as per the meaning of the word. "Sine" is derived from the Sanskrit word for 'chord' as per its initial usage in determining the length of straight line segments between two arbitrary points on a circle.
- marosgrego 4y agocos and sin are the x and y coordinates as you turn around the unit circle in unit speed.