reddit / emacs

How to make calc-symbolic-mode apply to sin

Isaac22877822 · 2022-06-11 09:56
So I've just started playing with calc mode and it's amazing. However I found one problem: symbolic-mode doesn't seem to affect sin. When I push 2 onto the stack and type S it evaluates to a float even with symbolic mode enabled. The same does not happen with square roots. ​ Here's my calc.el (setq calc-display-trail nil) (setq calc-symbolic-mode t) (setq calc-angle-mode 'rad) (setq calc-simplify-mode 'none) (setq calc-complex-format 'i) (setq calc-prefer-frac t) If anyone knows anything I'd appreciate some help, if not checkout calc mode, it's really cool.
simbledress · 2022-06-18 06:49
IIUC `symbolic-mode` is only for *inexact* computations. `sin(2)` is not irrational.
Isaac22877822 · 2022-06-20 22:45
Thanks for looking into this. I'm not sure that sin 2 is rational. I couldn't prove it either way. Regardless I have the same behavior for sin 1 which is [definitely](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1124435/proving-that-sin1-radian-is-irrational-without-using-taylor-series-expansio) irrational. So I think it might be a bug.