Bernie, No, I don't think you should be able to do arctan(3/4) in your head. I certainly can't. If one believes the story, Ms. Marques had gotten the question from the FCAT, and should have had adequate time to find out what the right answer was. She certainly should have known that 30-60-90 wasn't correct. (If it was a multiple-guess question, then the choices should have been sufficiently far apart to make the correct choice apparent; if it were a free response, then it becomes somewhat harder without a trig-enabled calculator; I believe non-trig calculators are required for the FCAT.) Speaking of free response, I went on to question 14 of that same (Grade 10 Math) sample FCAT, and discovered (by looking at the "correct" answer) that the word "part" means "proportion". I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have figured that out. --ms Bernie Cosell wrote:
On 7 Jul 2004 at 14:49, Mike Speciner wrote:
... And it's not a surprise that Ms. Marques didn't know the right answer either (at least if one is cynical about U.S. public education).
[answer to: what are the angles of a 3:4:5 triangle]
The right angle is easy, but am I missing some trick or is there a huge hole in my education in that I can't do arctan(.75) in my head?
/bernie\