User:GFauxPas/Sandbox

Welcome to my sandbox, you are free to play here as long as you don't track sand onto the main wiki. --GFauxPas 09:28, 7 November 2011 (CST)

Thoughts on the picture, anyone? --GFauxPas 14:37, 9 November 2011 (CST)


 * Looks okay to me. I was going to get round to doing something similar myself at one point.


 * Mind, if you're planning on using it to illustrate sine and cosine, you might want to add the actual distances as lines. Oh, and purists may wince when they see x and y used to define the axes and the point on it, but I wouldn't be too fussed. --prime mover 14:47, 9 November 2011 (CST)

Try 2. I see I lost too many colors by saving it as a .gif, try 3 will be a .png or something.



Let $P = (x,y)$ be a point on the unit circle centered at the origin.

Let $\theta$ be the angle formed by the arc $(1,0)$, $(x,y)$ subtending the origin, measured counterclockwise.

The unit circle definition of the trigonometric functions are

$\cos \theta := x$

$\sin \theta := y$

That is, the directed distance between $P$ and the $x$-axis is the cosine, and the directed distance between $P$ and the $y$-axis is the sine.

Sources: khan academy "tau versus pi", wolfram mathworld "trigonometry"

After this is set up I can do a proof of the consistency between the right triangle definition and the circle definition. --GFauxPas 07:22, 17 November 2011 (CST)