The Calculator supports three notations for angles: radians, degrees,
and degrees-minutes-seconds. When a number is presented to a function
like sin
that requires an angle, the current angular mode is
used to interpret the number as either radians or degrees. If an HMS
form is presented to sin
, it is always interpreted as
degrees-minutes-seconds.
Functions that compute angles produce a number in radians, a number in degrees, or an HMS form depending on the current angular mode. If the result is a complex number and the current mode is HMS, the number is instead expressed in degrees. (Complex-number calculations would normally be done in radians mode, though. Complex numbers are converted to degrees by calculating the complex result in radians and then multiplying by 180 over @c{$\pi$} pi.)
The m r (calc-radians-mode
), m d (calc-degrees-mode
),
and m h (calc-hms-mode
) commands control the angular mode.
The current angular mode is displayed on the Emacs mode line.
The default angular mode is degrees.