Jedo's School Help Thread

[Jedo the Jedi]

After attending my first day of school and discovering just how hard my five pre-AP and AP classes are, I've decided to start this thread. In this thread, questions can be posed about school stuff, and the smarter people on this board my be able to answer them. I don't have any questions at the moment, it being only the first day of school, but I'm sure that I will shortly.

Today, in Pre-Cal, we learned how to convert degrees to radians and back again. It seems like a pretty easy concept, but very wierd and I have no idea what use they could be. Anyway, that's that. I'll have some questions by the end of the week, and other people, feel free to ask your own.

[mathgrant]

So far as I can tell, the only use of radians is to make the derivatives of the sine and cosine functions neater
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[Jedo the Jedi]

Well, that sounds completely useless!

[Courk]

You'll learn to love radians.

[mith]

Radians make a lot of things a lot simpler. The main one that comes to mind is that the arc length around a unit circle is equal to the angle measure of the arc in radians.

Degrees are arbitrary, radians at least have some reason behind them.

[Chuck]

Degrees are for applied math, and if you apply math you get kicked out of the club or something.

[jadesmar]

Do yourself a favour and start thinking in radians.. a right angle is Pi/2.

Convert to degrees only when necessary.

Wait, what degree ((radians/PI)*180)? are you studying?

If electronics is involved.. radians are clearly your friend. Though the 2*Pi sometimes Hertz.

[Lucky Wizard]

Eratosthenes used radian measure to figure out the radius of the Earth. He knew, from caravan voyages, the distance between two cities, and he knew, from observations of the sun, what portion of a radius the arc between those two cities was. He then put two and two together.

[Vinny]

and get 4 as the radius. And he looked at it and goes, "4!??!?! THAT CANT BE RIGHT!". Then he went to stare at a stick all day.

[Jedo the Jedi]

Yes, that's my formula, jadesmar. So, pretty much, only use degrees when required? I think I can do that. I have most of them memorized for the thirds and fourths of each quadrant. Which is a good thing, because I have a quiz over it tomorrow.

Today, we did a bunch of junk with sin and cos. Haven't got to tan yet, but we will soon. I don't know what the point of today's lesson actually was, but we learned how to find sin and cos without using a calculator (or something like that). Right now, I have two homework assignments due Thursday and Monday of next week, and two tests: one Friday and one next Friday.

Then, there's Physics, but I won't get into that today.

[Jedo the Jedi]

Also, I just got a brand new TI-83+ calculator, and I will be spending the majority of my freetime programing all my necessary programs. If there are any that you think I should program, let me know what they are and how to do them. So far, I've learned how to do a quadratic formula.

[Beartalon]

I miss the days when we weren't allowed to use programmable calculators.

[Neo]

Learn to use the old fashioned tables and old calculators and (gasp!) pencil and paper. There have been times a hokey result on the calculator has led me to use one or more of those and avoid a wrong answer on a crucial test. Not to mention, it's great for checking any answer.
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[Guest]

Sounds more like Trig to me than Pre Cal

[Samadhi]

[Jedo the Jedi]

No, we don't get to use the calculator for Pre-Cal. I might use it for Physics, but not Pre-Cal. My teacher wants us to learn all the formulas and remember them. And it is Pre-Cal, but we're in the "Trig" section. I think next semester is Algebra related stuff or something. It's a college-credit course.

Anyway, today, we didn't do anything but a worksheet. It was on sin and cos junk. BLECH! I'm going to ask for help because I just feel overwhelmed. I mean, I know how to do it, in theory, but when it comes down to it, I just can't.

However, the cool part about today, Wednesday, is that school doesn't start until nine o'clock because the teachers meet to make sure they are teaching what they're suppose to. Then, I got out early for a physical. Pretty good day.

[Courk]

It sucks you can't use the calculator for calc. It makes everything so much faster. (I hate wasting time with pencil and paper when I know I know how to do it that way.)

I loved physics. I was the only person to get an "Excellence in Physics" at our award ceremony.

I didn't program much into my calculator for physics, but we had a list of every formula. The point was knowing which one to use where. If, however, you need programs for your formulas, just give me the formulas and I'd be willing to write the program for you. You'd have to enter it yourself since I can't link mine to my computer, but I think I'm fairly decent at calculator programming, and a perfectionist. I took a whole semester class on it.

[The Ragin' South Asian]

programs to write when you get bored in class:
pig latinizer
guess the number
count for no reason

the important thing is to delete these once school is over (you should write them as early as possible so you can use them during the day) so you can write them again the next day

[Courk]

Or just draw on your calculator. That's a small challenge.

[Samadhi]

That's what I had to do.....I'm probably one of the few younger than dirt that did.....but I had to.

Calculators were NOT allowed. Period. I have no idea why I should not feel justified looking down my nose at those that would require one.

[Jedo the Jedi]

Today, in Pre-Cal, we went over our worksheets in class, and corrected them so we could study for tomorrow's test. Pretty easy, I played around on my calculator some.

In Physics, we did this boring lab where we measure the circumference and diameter of a round object. I think the actual point was to get used to the process of doing an experiment, but if you had Chemistry before, you ought to already know.

In History, we talked vaguely about Marx's Communist Manifesto and how it related to the Era of Progressive Thought (c. 1900-1946). Very interesting, and we didn't do any work.

Spanish, was the fun part of the day. We took a short quiz on stem-changing verbs, then we listened to a guy named Justo Lamas. He's a singer and we have a copy of one of his songs. The catch, is that some words are missing, so as we listen to it, we fil in the words. It's really hard, but he sounds so funny singing this love song in Spanish, it's great. Maybe if i can find a copy on the net, I'll link it and you can listen to it.

Anyway, I don't need help today, just thought I'd post the highlights. If you want to go ahead and post those formulas, RSA, I'll program them this weekend to test them out. Courk, I don't have any formulas yet, but when I get some, I'll post them.

[Beartalon]

[Jedo the Jedi]

IT'S THE WEEKEND!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111one

Took a test in Pre-Cal today, review. Easy as pi. I have some sin and cos homework, but that's it.

I'm trying out for the school play Annie Get Your Gun. That'll be fun. Anyway, holla!

[doormouse11]

The one semester I used a graphing calculator I found it really hard to get a B (precal). Since then, I've tried to do most of the work manually to be sure that I actually can do it. I still check myself with my calculator. And I've gotten A's the last two semesters with less of a struggle(cal I and II).

Oh yeah - and I wrote a program on my calculator that calculates how many people (clones of one of my friends, to be specific) vs. parakeets would fit into one classroom. Definitely an essential for any programmable calculator I didn't really go into the details - just guessed the volume of my friend and then the volume that an enraged parakeet would need (seeing as my friend and his clones would definitely enrage them) and the volume of the room.

[Jedo the Jedi]

More sin and cos shit, today. I'm getting sick of it. Tomorrow, I think we're going to venture into tan. Blech! Anyway, lots of homework, so I've got to go.

[kevinatilusa]

Common sense is always a good companion to calculators (and computer programs)...I've had some instances where rounding error led to results which were quite absurd (mostly when taking ratios of very large or very small results, though there was one case where I had Mathematica compute the integral of a real valued function and give me a complex number )

[Guest]

What kind of School are you at? I mean, like, University, high school or what? How odl are you?

[Jedo the Jedi]

I'm just a junior at Amarillo High School. Just got my liscence(?) a couple weeks ago.

Anyway, today we learned how to figure csc, cot, sec. OH MY GOSH!!! It's not really that hard, if I have my table to look at. We only figure through 90 degrees, then we just add a minus sign if necessary. Well, I have about fifteen problems left on this homework, and I don't have my table. I'm going to have to rush to do it tomorrow during lunch. Argh!

Lots of tests and quizzes coming up. We started reading the Scarlet Letter this week, and so far, I find it boring beyond anything imaginable. Of course, I really don't know what's going on, so...

Well, that's just a short update. I think I'm coming down with the flu, so I might go to bed early, but I don't want to miss the Amazing Race. What a predicament. Maybe I won't have to go to school tomorrow, though. *crosses fingers*

[Samadhi]

[Courk]

Woah. Samadhi's a nun?

[Guest]

Most of this stuff belongs in VSN, not SA&C. Questions about school problems go here. Updates on how school is going go in VSN.

[doormouse11]

I started Probabiligy and Statistics today. Look how I have to write "average" from now on.



Crazy. So, considering I haven't done anything but calculus in at least a year, what is Probability and Statistics all about ?

[Dread Pirate Westley]

Here's how I write average: =Average(range)

[Jedo the Jedi]

When I get into the hard stuff, this thread will have questions. For now, it's only the second week of school. I've got a test tomorrow on all the Pre-Cal stuff so far. Wish me luck. *crosses fingers again, but harder*

Samadhi, what is your problem now? Figuring sin, cos, tan, csc, sec, cot only through 90 degrees is a lot easier than figuring it all the way around and memorizing it. Is that why you did that, or were you just upset that I didn't write it this way: 90 ^o ?

[The Ragin' South Asian]

i think he wanted pi/2 radians

[Courk]

I took probability and statistics last year. I don't remember it being too hard. It is different from anything else I've encountered, and there are some various formulas I had to memorize, but as long as you know what they are everything else shoudl be fairly simple.

[Jedo the Jedi]

Yeah, I thought about that too, RSA, after I'd already posted. I was just too lazy to add that.

[doormouse11]

In cal III we are graphing functions of two variables - (z=f(x,y) - three variables total). How would you graph a function of 3 or more variables?

how is this 4-d? http://www.superliminal.com/cube/cube.htm

[Antrax]

MIT has this Java thing that lets you plot multiple-variable functions, surfaces, vector fields etc. If you're interested, I could dig up the link.
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[Jedo the Jedi]

I thought the 4th dimension was time?