Hi all,
I'm also clearly in favour of the radian default. Actually I would go so
far as to say that the degree mode should never be used, not even at high
schools. Yes, it is true, you'll have to input a few more letters, say
sin(30 deg) instead of sin(30), but you are still dealing with the real
McCoy, i.e. the same sine function that is used later on in calculus and
can be defined via its taylor series
sin(x) = x - x^3/3! + x^5/5! - ...
If in degree mode, you are actually using pseudo-trigonometric functions
SI(x):=SIN(x pi/180), CO(x):=COS(x pi/180) etc.
for which a number of familar equations such as
(si(x))'=co(x), lim(si(x)/x,x,0)=1, exp(ix)=co(x)+i si(x)
and, of course, the taylor series above no longer hold. On top of this all,
usually the same notatations for these two different types of functions are
used, which is clearly an abuse of language and notation. Therefore my
advice both from a didactical and mathematical point of view: Avoid that
degree mode like the plague!
Cheers, Johann
>>
>>How comfortable are you all with radians being DERIVE's default, rather
>>than degrees? Do you prefer it that way? Is it an obstacle to more ready
>>acceptance of DERIVE at pre-calculus school level? One of our customers
>>suggested this was so and I'd be interested to hear what you think.
>>
>>Cheers
>>Philip Yorke
>>
>
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