Trigonometry assignment

[insane_alien]

you can figure out sin cos and tan yourself. it's not all that complicated. just a matter of ratios.

 

remember SOH CAH TOA ? that pretty much explains everything right there.

[Bignose]

Sandman, it's okay to want to figure things out for yourself, but when you do figure them out, you have to check to make sure they are right. You cannot just assume that you didn't make any mistakes. And in this case, you had 2,000 years of people before you telling you you were wrong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_trigonometric_functions

 

After you get done figuring things out for yourself, you should check to make sure you did everything right.

[MrSandman]

I know that. However, my answer was close, but that makes it wrong. I used common logic and it seemed right. Guess I should look back and see If can figure out a ratio system for it.

[Bignose]

Sandman, not to be too hackneyed here, and though part of me is loathe to say a cliche, but "close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." Meaning, the answer may have been close, but what does close really mean? If in the application, +- 10 m was okay, then, yes, your answer was fine. If you only had +- 1 m, your answer was exceptionally poor.

 

Let me give you an example, let's say you were a scrap metal dealer and you were going to pay someone for this tower ... by your method you just overpaid someone for 8 m of metal that wasn't there.

 

Finally, however, the question was about how to do a math problem. I could have guessed, and been "close" but how does that help the person trying to solve the math problem? I think that's precisely why math was invented, so that we wouldn't have to just guess. Math is very exact, and being close on a math problem usually isn't good enough. There was an exact correct way to do this problem, and your way wasn't it.

 

Math is either right, or it's wrong. If I tried to say 2 + 2 = 4.03, I'd be wrong, even though I was "close". It's as simple as that.

 

Edit: I don't want to add another post, so I'm just going to add this: I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your tone. I took your tone when you wrote "However, my answer was close..." as in it wasn't all THAT wrong, that it WAS close, that my method is NEARLY right, not in the tone you meant with your next post there.

[MrSandman]

That's what I said it was still wrong.