Cosine Function Innacurate? What gives?

[wraygun]

Hi there,

Why is it that when I use the following line in qbasic it returns a different value than a scientific calculator?

print cos(18)

The computer returns the value:

.6603167

When I do the equivalent function on a scientific calulator, the result is :

.951056516

I know the latter is correct, and the qbasic result isn't. Can anyone explain this and perhaps offer a suggestion for accurate cosine function in qbasic?

Thanks
Harold

 

[riesjuh]

qbasic counts the function in radians, scientific calculator in degrees

 

[riesjuh]

if you set your scientific calculator on the radian mode, it will return the same answer as qbasic, so the qbasic-answer is also correct, but just on a different scale

 

[wraygun]

Thanks,

I further found out that to convert degrees to radians,you divide as follows:

degrees /(3.14159265/180) = radians

cosine(radians) in qbasic = cosine(degrees) on a scientific calculator.

Wraygun