Has anyone else developed a hate for cosine?

  • Context: High School 
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    Cosine
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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around participants' feelings towards the cosine function, particularly in relation to its differentiation and integration properties. The scope includes personal preferences, humor, and some technical aspects of trigonometric functions.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Humorous

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express frustration with cosine due to the sign change during differentiation and integration, comparing it unfavorably to sine.
  • Others suggest that the issue lies not with cosine itself but with the rules of calculus, proposing simplifications to avoid sign changes.
  • A few participants find the question silly or humorous, indicating a light-hearted tone in parts of the discussion.
  • Some participants express a preference for sine over cosine, while others enjoy both functions, citing different reasons for their preferences.
  • One participant humorously anthropomorphizes the relationship between sine and cosine, describing it as complex and fraught with misunderstandings.
  • Several participants mention difficulties with other trigonometric functions like secant and cosecant, indicating a broader context of frustration with trigonometry.
  • Some express a fondness for cosine, highlighting its properties, such as its evenness in Taylor series expansions.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus on their feelings towards cosine; multiple competing views are present, with some expressing dislike and others showing appreciation.

Contextual Notes

The discussion includes humorous and exaggerated expressions of frustration, which may not reflect serious mathematical concerns. The anthropomorphization of sine and cosine introduces a playful narrative that may not align with traditional mathematical discourse.

Who May Find This Useful

Readers interested in the interplay of humor and mathematics, particularly in trigonometry, may find this discussion engaging.

Do you hate cos(x)?

  • yes

    Votes: 7 17.9%
  • no

    Votes: 33 84.6%
  • I hate sin(x) more

    Votes: 3 7.7%

  • Total voters
    39
  • #31
lisab said:
a little phase change

Haha. I get the phase constant joke.
 
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  • #32
I like even functions better than odd ones, so cosine gets the nod. It's a pity that the co- prefix makes it sound like a second-class citizen.
 
  • #33
I think Curious3141 may have already hinted at this, but...

If you don't like the negative sign, you can always embrace the hyperbolic sine and hyperbolic cosine.

\frac{d}{dx}\sinh (x) = \cosh (x)
\frac{d}{dx}\cosh (x) = \sinh (x)
No negative signs there.

Plus, hyperbolic functions come up naturally (a lot) when modeling uniform acceleration* in special relativity.
*(Edit: uniform, proper acceleration, that is.)
 
  • #34
I just noticed the similarity between the phrases hate cosine and haute cuisine. That can't possibly be a coincidence. Especially with ##\pi## involved.
 
  • #35
jbunniii said:
I just noticed the similarity between the phrases hate cosine and haute cuisine. That can't possibly be a coincidence. Especially with ##\pi## involved.

+1! :smile:
 
  • #36
Nikitin said:
Has anyone else developed a hate for cosine?

Cosine ruined my life. When I was in high school, a friend introduced me to cosine. Until that point, all I knew was sine. Sometimes I would solve a tangent at a party, but only if I knew I had a ride home. Cosine was especially troublesome for me... it looked so much like sine that my family and friends never knew the difference.

Once I hit college, and I had a lot of freedom, I started investing more time in cosine. It started harmlessly enough by cutting into my social time, but slowly I became a recluse. Then my school work faltered and I was put on academic probation. I joined a support group during that time, but it only introduced me to more people with the same addiction. We would sit there in meetings and fantasize about cosine in polar coordinates or solving it in higher dimensions. Me and two other guys dropped out of the support group and would spend every night on Wolfram Alpha graphing cosine function after cosine function.

I didn't answer phone calls from family or friends, and I was quickly kicked out of school. I lived on the street for a few months that summer, too ashamed to confront my family. I would scrounge for scraps of pizza in the garbage and would draw the cosine function with the sauce. I lived like that with $cos(π/2) in my pocket.

Finally, I dragged myself back to my family when drawing cos(x) in the sand at elementary school parks landed me in jail several times. They were so happy to see me, but that feeling quickly faded when my addiction started to affect them too. I started drawing cosine on the bathroom mirror in soap which forced my family to experience it when they got out of the shower. They tolerated until my 15 year old brother (who we all suspected partook of sine with his skater friends) got caught at school adding (π/2) to his sine argument in the parking lot during study hall.

I knew I had gone too far. But so did my parents.

They kicked me out of the house and I checked into a mental hospital. With the help of professionals and some hyperbolic trig functions I was able to ween myself off of cosine after about a year, but my family still won't talk to me. It's been four years since I've talked to my parents.

All because of cosine.

Do I hate it? Yes. And it made me hate myself.
 
  • #37
I don't hate cos(x) but I despise all log(x)s that are not ln(x). What kind of sick mind thought those things are a good idea?
 
  • #38
Why did you enable multiple answers for this type of question? :confused:
 

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