monke-beepboop

  • cosecantphi [he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    Never understood why we're taught specific names for these trig functions rather than just expressing them all in terms of sine and cosine

      • cosecantphi [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        Alternatively, one could just use cos(x-90) in place of sine. Since it's arbitrary which we throw out, I say keep them both (also it allows you to intuitively associate sine and cosine with the legs of a right triangle in the unit circle)

        • CarbonScored [any]
          ·
          3 months ago

          I'm not sure why cos gets a pass but 'csc' doesn't. I'd absolutely argue the opposite in terms of intuitive associations.

          • cosecantphi [he/him]
            ·
            3 months ago

            I'd say sine and cosine get priority because they are much more well behaved and easier to work with than their reciprocals full of asymptotes and discontinuities

        • CarbonScored [any]
          ·
          3 months ago

          I posted no units, maybe it is radians and I'm just bad at maths

        • alexandra_kollontai [she/her]
          ·
          3 months ago

          What's wrong with degrees? Everybody understands them and they're whole numbers that are easy to work with.

          • cosecantphi [he/him]
            ·
            3 months ago

            Nothing wrong with degrees, they are definitely more useful for engineering and practical applications in many cases. But while doing math for math's sake, radians feel much more elegant because pi is a fundamental result of our axiomatic system whereas degrees are totally arbitrary numbers picked for convenience.

    • moondog [he/him]
      ·
      3 months ago

      Maybe it was back in the day people would rather remember shorthands for csc and such rather than having to write it out long form each time. (I agree with your point tho I'd rather not have to memorize those)

    • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Because before calculators, people used to had books with a buch of tables with the values of each function and their solution. So, having sen and csc given is easier than having to solve 1/sin

      Edit: here's an excellent video about one of these books: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OjIwCOevUew