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what are the operations of the six main trig functions (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by jackpot@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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sorry for my layman terminology, but to my understanding as a coder a function has a name, parameters, arguments and operations. if sin is the name, and its parameters are side opposite and hypotenuse, and its arguments are context dependent, what is the operation itself? am i making sense?

def sin (hypotenuse, opposite):
     ??!?!?!!?

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[–] funnyboy_roks@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago

The parameter for the sin function is an angle. The angle can be specified in either radians or degrees, depending on the context. The output of the sin function is the ratio between the opposite side and the hypotenuse on a right triangle like this.

There are many different algorithms which can be used to calculate sin(a), but all that I know require a decent understanding of Calculus (Taylor Series) or Trigonometry (CORDIC). You can find a Python implementation of the CORDIC algorithm here.

In a more general sense, the "operation" of the sin function is the "sin" operation. In maths, one very rarely goes lower than f(a) = sin(a) and when one does, it's often just to find an alternate way to estimate the value of sin. One can think of the sin function as being similar to ln(x) in that it is much closer to an operation than being an actual function.