Re: Many overlook the possibility sin(x,360.0) ?

[Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com>]

On Monday, May 1, 2017 at 2:04:13 PM UTC-6, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On 2017-05-01 19:46, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
> > On 5/1/2017 12:22 AM, reinert wrote:
> 
> >> Not a big philosophical question, but:
> >>
> >> I have often seen in (others) Ada code that many prefer to use for
> >> example sin(x)
> >> where they first calculate x := rad_per_degree*degrees.
> >>
> >> Why they do not use sin(degrees,360.0) if they need to use degree.
> >> Are there a good reason? Using sin(x, 3600.0) seems to keep the code
> >> simpler. Sometimes I even use sin(x,period).
> 
> I remember the first thing they taught us during the first semester was 
> to ditch degrees...

That is honestly stupid; given how I remember it being done "in the name of 'accuracy' -- the problem is that it's not more accurate: 90° *IS* π/2 radians.

Difficulty/complexity of handling is completely discrete from accuracy, and if we wanted a good constant for circles it would be 2π -- as shown here: http://www.math.utah.edu/%7Epalais/pi.pdf (see also: http://tauday.com/tau-manifesto )