Can someone tell my what cos, sin and tan actually measure?
In: Mathematics
They are a ratio. But much more than that. Tan is “less useful” than the others but still useful in some applications, it’s just that tan is directly related to sin and cos. Sine (sin) is the base function here, everything else can be made in terms of it. If you are familiar with the basic definitions, sohcahtoa, then that doesn’t really tell you what they are just how to calculate them for triangles. Even in this, however, you can see the ratios at play, it’s opposite over hypotenuse. That’s a ratio. What they actually are though, is they are a way of measuring phase angles. This gives them a lot of power but they aren’t really a thing, they are a way of converting between types of units, angles to numbers, lengths to angles to numbers, etc. and the biggest power is that measurement of phase angles, allowing you to convert from a wave function to something else, or a circle to a line.
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