what are you actually doing when you do sin(x), cos(x), or tan(x), or the inverses outside of a triangle. Like if you plug sin(7) into a calculator what is actually happening.

Question

what are you actually doing when you do sin(x), cos(x), or tan(x), or the inverses outside of a triangle. Like if you plug sin(7) into a calculator what is actually happening.

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

>what are you actually doing when you do sin(x), cos(x), or tan(x), or the inverses outside of a triangle. Like if you plug sin(7) into a calculator what is actually happening.

There is no exact calculation path for the result. The machine looks up the result in a predefined table or approximates the it with something like the [Taylor series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_series).