On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 11:33 PM, Justin Harford <blindstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> Does anyone here know how to set maxima in degree mode for tan sin cos
> and etc such that
> tan(45) = 1
Thanks for your interest in Maxima. Maxima trigonometric routines take
arguments expressed in radians; this is the usual convention in
mathematics and physics, though in engineering degrees may be more
common.
There is no way to tell Maxima to use degrees instead. However, you
can easily define trig routines with degree arguments:
deg_to_rad(d) := %pi*d/180$
rad_to_deg(r):= r*180/%pi$
sind(x):=sin(deg_to_rad(x))$
etc.
asind(x) := asin(rad_to_deg(x))$
...
sind(45) => 1/sqrt(2)
sind(30) => 1/2
sind(15) => sin(%pi/12)
If you want numeric values for cases like sind(15), you can say
float(sind(15));
or
sind(15),numer;
Welcome to Maxima!
-s