TAN different to a calculator? Please help would be appreciated lo

[Guest]

Hi,

I am doing my GCSE at the moment and I have come up with a fomula to
calculate the area of any polygon. My formula includes TAN but when I use the
TAN function on Excel it gives me a completely different answer to my
calculator.

Please help, is TAN different in America? Sorry if this sounds really stupid
but I need to know.

Thanks

 

[Guest]

Be careful when using trig functions, you gotta make sure you're using
radians/degrees correctly. The TAN() in excel handles Radians. For example
to get the tangent of 45 DEGREES use the following formula:

=TAN(45*PI()/180)

 

[Pete]

Do you know the difference between degrees and radians? I suspect you
are using degrees but you need radians in the TAN( ) formula - Help
will explain how to convert.

Pete

 

[Bernard Liengme]

David's answer is correct but to save you remembering is it PI()/180 or
180/Pi()
use the RADIANS and DEGREES function.
A1 has 45 entered (meaning 45 degrees), to get the tan of this angle use
=TAN(RADIANS(A1))
B1 has 0.866 and you what the asin (inverse sine), use =DEGREES(ASIN(B1))

best wishes with GCSE - I took mine 50 years ago when it was called 'O'
level

 

[Guest]

Thanks people!!

That really helped me, the website just made it sound sooo complicated. I
fully understand it and thank you greatly for your assistance!

 

[MrShorty]

What units (degrees, radians, gradians) is your calculator set to? My
US version of Excel requires the argument to the TAN function to be in
radians, and I would assume that would be the same for versions for
other countries. If your argument is in degrees, convert it to radians
before applying the TAN function.