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Re: Mathematica and Lisp
Posted:
Mar 6, 2013 5:54 AM
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On 3/5/2013 7:54 PM, djmpark wrote:
> Reverse the order of what? ArcTan of one argument has only one argument and
> how can that be reversed? What has two arguments is the coordinate
> specification {x, y} and they are not reversed in ArcTan[x, y].
>
> It is the one argument form ArcTan[y/x] that seems poorly designed and would
> probably only be used when one knows the quotient and not x and y - so there
> wouldn't be anything to reverse.
>
>
> David Park
> djmpark@comcast.net
> http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/index.html
>
>
>
>
> From: Richard Fateman [mailto:fateman@cs.berkeley.edu]
>
> (simple example: why does Mathematica reverse the order of arguments to
> arctan of 2 args?)
>
> RJf
>
>
ArcTan[x,y] in Mathematica gives the ArcTan[y/x] but in the correct
quadrant.
atan2 (y,x) in FORTRAN gives the arctangent of y/x). Note the order of
arguments.
in C++
in Pascal
in Java
in Lisp (atan y x)
in PHP
in Python v 3.3.0
in Ruby
I was able to find just one programming language that agrees with the
order in Mathematica.
That is Microsoft's Excel. Now it could be that compatibility with Excel is
more important than compatibility with those other languages. Google
docs has to
use the same order as Excel, but I think it is generally recognized as being
compatible with an error.
Just sayin'.
RJF
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