Malapropism in Windows Calculator Accessory
Sunday, March 10, 2002 at 12:56 pm
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Sundar Narayan
(1 messages posted)
The Calculator can be found under Programs/Accessories. It lets you calculate, among
other things, trigonometric functions of angles. When you choose the menu item "View"
and "Scientific", it allows you to input the angle in degrees, radians and "gradients".
Actually, there is no such unit called "gradients" for measuring angles. Microsoft
undoubtedly means "grades", which is a rarely-used unit for measuring angles -- proof
of this can be easily obtained by typing in "100", choosing "gradients" (sic) and
pressing "sin"; the Calculator gives the answer as 1, which is correct since sin(100
grades) = sin(90 degrees) = 1. A circle can be divided into 360 degrees or 400 grades
(not gradients!). I once read that the French liking the metric system wanted angular
measures to be also metric. Therefore, they came up with grades - a right angle
equals 100 grades, 100 being a nice "metric" number, unlike 90 degrees.
Evidently, the Microsoft employee who wrote the code for the Calculator did not know
much about the history of mathematics. Anyway, he must be dead and his position
never filled - the Calculator has remained the same since Windows 3.1.
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All messages in this thread [show all]
 | Malapropism in Windows Calculator Accessory (Sundar Narayan: Sun, Mar 10, 2002, 12:56 pm) |
 |  | | |  | re: Paul (Mrs. Bagley: Sun, Mar 10, 2002, 6:55 pm) |
| | | | Paul (Mrs. Bagley: Mon, Mar 11, 2002, 6:30 am) |
| | | | | re: Paul (Colin: Mon, Mar 11, 2002, 8:49 am) |
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