Mobile phone apps: Nexus 4 onboard calculator: trig functions

The tutor offers a hint about using the Nexus 4 onboard calculator for sin, cos, and tan.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to get acquainted with my mobile phone. Believe it or not, I’ve been lounging on the couch, panning through its menus to discover how to use its features.

My phone is a Nexus 4, running Android 5.1.1. Last night, among the apps, I discovered its onboard calculator. I love the simple design. At the right is a green tab that you can “pull out”, revealing scientific functions.

On mine, anyway, sin, cos, and tan expect the angle to be in rads. For instance, sin30° is 0.5. However, if I enter sin30 on the Nexus 4 calculator, it replies -0.9880…., which is sin(30rads).

If you’re in the same situation, you can get the answer for degrees by entering, for example,

sin((angle in degrees)xπ÷180)

You’ll probably see the π button on the green pull-out, perhaps below sin, cos, and tan.

Therefore, if you want tan45°, just key in

tan(45xπ÷180)

The answer should say 1.

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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