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Trig Functions


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Post: #2
09-14-2013, 05:57 PM
Howard Owen Offline
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This from the Onion,


and this from Scientific American .

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Post: #3
09-14-2013, 06:25 PM
Pier Aiello Offline
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Nice :)

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Post: #4
09-14-2013, 07:28 PM
Namir Offline
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Cute but I would not write home about it!!!

I was dabbling with DEFINING NEW TRIG FUNCTIONS recently, and I tell you that coming up with zinger functions IS NOT EASY!!!

Namir

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Post: #5
09-14-2013, 07:41 PM
Garth Wilson Offline
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How did our space program ever get going without them?! Idiotic.

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Post: #6
09-14-2013, 08:14 PM
Namir Offline
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Very idiotic!!!!

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Post: #7
09-14-2013, 09:09 PM
Katie Wasserman Offline
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Yeah, but they have fun names! My favorite semi-obscure mathematics terms are 'subtrahend' and 'minuend'. I think everyone from my generation learned them in grade school in the USA but most promptly forgot them since they were never used again. I always thought that they would make excellent names for a pair of small dogs.

Edited: 14 Sept 2013, 9:10 p.m.

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Post: #8
09-15-2013, 02:02 AM
Pier Aiello Offline
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Obscure? I filled entire pages of subtrahend and minuend in my firsts grades, just to memorize those terms. Damn teacher.

Edited: 15 Sept 2013, 4:34 p.m. after one or more responses were posted

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Post: #9
09-15-2013, 10:59 AM
Gerson W. Barbosa Offline
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Here (in Brazil) we call them minuendo and subtraendo. I've just correctly guessed what the latter should be in Italian: sottraendo. This makes for a nice mnemonic. From Wikipedia:

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Per fare una sottrazione in colonna bisogna prima scrivere il minuendo, e sotto, il sottraendo: 86 - 34 = 52

86-

34=

--

52
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These were taught in first or second grade, I think. Good old days when memory was always fresh and neurons worked at full speed :-)
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Post: #10
09-15-2013, 12:19 PM
Massimo Gnerucci (Italy) Offline
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Well done Gerson, A+ or, as we were used here, 10+


:)

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Post: #11
09-15-2013, 05:37 PM
Gerson W. Barbosa Offline
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Grazie, Massimo! :-)

Numeric grades are used here as well, but for a while we had alpha grades in high-school, which I disliked.

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Post: #12
09-15-2013, 08:21 AM
Eddie W. Shore Offline
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LOL. I loved the Onion article.

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Post: #13
09-16-2013, 02:53 PM
Fred Lusk Offline
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Some of those "new" trig functions were used by surveyors in the pre-computer days and may still be used by them from time to time. I was introduced to them when I took Surveying I & II in college. But, since I'm a civil engineer and I have a computer, I have no need for them any more.

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