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Retina display math
01-25-2014, 10:00 PM (This post was last modified: 01-25-2014 10:10 PM by Joe Horn.)
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Retina display math
In the Wikipedia article about "Retina Display", in the second paragraph of the "Technical definition" section, it has this phrase (DEGREE MODE is assumed):

"twice the Tan of π divided by 360 (equal to half a degree in radians)"

A few lines later it says:

"Two times the Tan of π divided by 360 can also be approximated with π divided by 180 (= 0.01745)."

Am I going senile, or are these statements mathematically whacked? According to all my HP calculators, in degree mode:

2*tan(pi)/360 = tan(pi)/180 = 0.000304923...
0.5 degrees = 0.008726646... radians
pi/180 = 0.01745329...

The article claims that the first two are equal, and that the first and third are approximately equal. But they're orders of magnitude apart. What's going on here?

It's not a degree mode versus radian mode thing. In radian mode, the first is zero and the other two remain unchanged.

EDIT: Oh, sorry, false alarm. They forgot to put parentheses around "pi divided by 360", and then it all works ok in radian mode, even though the article is entirely about degrees. Sheesh.

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Messages In This Thread
Retina display math - Joe Horn - 01-25-2014 10:00 PM
RE: Retina display math - Han - 01-25-2014, 10:31 PM
RE: Retina display math - Joe Horn - 01-26-2014, 04:59 AM



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