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I don't feel very strongly about this one way or the other, but let me just make a few points. The default for electronic calculators is degrees. It could hardly be otherwise, as many users will have never heard of radians, let alone want to use them. This set includes students at pre-calculus level - eg GCSE students. I don't know to what extent DERIVE has penetrated this possible market, but I hope it is small! Once students have cleared the GCSE hurdle, they must become acquainted with radians, and eventually reach the happy position of equal familiarity with both systems of measuring degrees. For those students who use both DERIVE and a calculator, having opposite defaults might well be beneficial to the learning process. At University, level there are some students who work almost always in degrees - Civil Engineers and any who do courses in Surveying or Navigation. On balance, I think the radian default should stay. Nigel Backhouse On Tue, 15 Jun 1999, Philip Yorke wrote: >Dear Derivers, > >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 > >Chartwell-Yorke (Mathematics Software and Books) >114 High Street, Belmont, Bolton, Lancashire, BL7 8AL, England. >[log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] >Telephone: (+44) (0)1204 811001 Fax: (+44) (0)1204 811008 > >Visit our Website at: http://www.chartwellyorke.com > > > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%