Yes, 355÷113 is very close to π, but is not equal to π

So how does it get things ‘right’ for cos(355÷113), but not right for sin(355÷113)?

And why is the error of π-355÷113 exactly the same as the error of sin(355÷113)?

I sense some fuckiness of how they handle π…

  • zkfcfbzr
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    52 days ago

    That comes down to the calculator using radians while you’re expecting degrees: cos(0°) = 1, and cos(355/113 degrees) = 0.99849714986386383364. The default for most calculators is to do trig functions in radians, and there we have cos(0) = 1 and cos(π) = -1. π degrees is much closer to 0° than 180° (which is equivalent to π radians), hence the answer for that being almost 1.

    The OPTN button near the SHIFT button will probably let you swap between RADians and DEGrees

    • @over_cloxOP
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      12 days ago

      Oh hell, alrighty then! Sure enough my old QBasic 3D graphics engine from 1998 was working in radians!

      Holy hell I forgot about that, it’s been about 27 years since I actually looked at my first rendering engine!

      I’ll see myself out now, but thank you for the refresher! 👍

    • @over_cloxOP
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      2 days ago

      I almost guarantee you all my calculators are configured for degrees for these tests. I edited my comment after testing 4 different calculators.

      Now I just don’t know why two of them give me -1 and the other two give me +1.

      Edit: I may have to learn more about this Casio, but still I’m getting conflicting results between other calculators, including modern Linux Calculator.

      • zkfcfbzr
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        22 days ago

        The correct answer in degrees is cos(pi) = 0.99849714986386383364. The correct answer in radians is cos(pi) = -1 (exactly). Any calculator giving you cos(pi) = -1 is definitely in radians mode - and if you mean you’re getting cos(pi) = exactly 1, and not 0.998, then that should never happen in any mode, unless it just has two digits of accuracy. Which I doubt any calculator with a ‘cos’ button has ever had.

        For the record, if using sine, you should have sin(pi) = 0.05480366514878953089 if in degrees mode, or sin(pi) = 0 (exactly) if in radians mode.