sorry for my layman terminology, but to my understanding as a coder a function has a name, parameters, arguments and operations. if sin is the name, and its parameters are side opposite and hypotenuse, and its arguments are context dependent, what is the operation itself? am i making sense?

def sin (hypotenuse, opposite):
     ??!?!?!!?
  • @BassTurd
    link
    11 year ago

    I’m not a math expert by any means so I can’t really answer the first part well. I can say that when I was taught trig, they were used to calculate angles in a triangle, and the function you used was dependent on the info you had. Sine/Cosecant, Cosine/Secant, and Tangent/Cotangent are the functions. Each function is paired with an opposite. To remember the formula, it’s Soh Cah Toa, where the first letter is the the function, the second two are the inputs. So, Sin(x) == opposite/hypotenuse, and then the opposite of that is Sec(x) == hypotenuse/opposite, and so on.

    That’s poorly explained and leaves a lot of info on the table, but that’s what I remember.