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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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[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Oddly enough, on a computer, I've have not seen secant, cosecant, or cotangent.

I have seen sin, cos, tan, arcsin, arccos, and arctan.

Though the arc functions will only have one parameter, so if this is homework, you'll probably be avoiding the arcs and using secant and friends

Anyways:

sin ( angle )

Term	In this example
Parameter	Angle is the parameter. It's in radians, so in Java you'll use a conversion like Math.toRadians(a) on whatever number you're going to use as an argument
Argument	If I were to call `sin(Math.PI / 4)` then I would be passing the argument `π / 4` to the function.
	In other words, if a parameter is a question, then an argument is an answer. If a parameter is a coin slot, than an argument is the coin you choose to insert.
Operation	An operation is practically synonymous with "function". It is performed on inputs to arrive at an output. However, usually in code, I hear "operation" used to describe things like `/`, `*`, and `+`. Things that have multiple inputs and a single output, all of the same form.

If someone is asking you, "which operation should you use in the body of function sin ( hyponetuse, opposite ) then I imagine the expected answer would be, / because

/ is an operation, and because
opposite / hypotenuse will perform the division that yields the sine of whatever triangle those two sides belong to.