On Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 10:24:42AM -0700, Michael Selik wrote: > Would sind and cosd make Euler's formula work correctly? > > sind(x) + i * sind(x) == math.e ** (i * x)
No, using degrees makes Euler's identity *not* work correctly, unless you add in a conversion factor from degrees to radians: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1368049/eulers-identity-in-degrees Euler's Identity works fine in radians: py> from cmath import exp py> exp(1j*math.pi) (-1+1.2246063538223773e-16j) which is close enough to -1 given the usual rounding issues with floats. (Remember, math.pi is not π, but a number close to it. There is no way to represent the irrational number π in less than an infinite amount of memory without symbolic maths.) [...] > Perhaps you'd prefer an enhancement to the fractions module that provides > real (not float) math? I should think not. Niven's Theorem tells us that for rational angles between 0° and 90° (that is, angles which can be represented as fractions), there are only THREE for which sine (and cosine) are themselves rational: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niven's_theorem Every value of sin(x) except for those three angles is an irrational number, which means they cannot be represented exactly as fractions or in a finite number of decimal places. What that means is that if we tried to implement real (not float) trigonometric functions on fractions, we'd need symbolic maths capable of returning ever-more complicated expressions involving surds. For example, the exact value of sin(7/2 °) involves a triple nested square root: 1/2 sqrt(2 - sqrt(2 + sqrt(3))) and that's one of the relatively pretty ones. sin(3°) is: -1/2 (-1)^(29/60) ((-1)^(1/60) - 1) (1 + (-1)^(1/60)) http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=exact+value+of+sine%2815%2F2+degrees%29 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=exact+value+of+sine%283+degrees%29 This proposal was supposed to *simplify* the trig functions for non-mathematicians, not make them mind-bogglingly complicated. -- Steve _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/