Oddly enough, on a computer, I 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 becauseopposite / hypotenuse
will perform the division that yields the sine of whatever triangle those two sides belong to.
Hmm… so an approach that would have gotten Rodeo’s point across better might have been to say,
Because democracy is such a broad word that it is occasionally applied to the United States, despite the CIA’s history of coups and the FBI’s history of extrajudicial assassinations of citizens.