Converting Radians to Degrees

[Andrew Murphy]

My classroom has changed over to all Nspire CAS units this past year. I had my students in PreCalculus last year constantly switching between degrees and radians, but it seemed like even more of a hassle than on an 83/84, as it seemed like you had to go to settings, general settings, switch the mode, then tell it to make default and then go back to whatever you were doing (so like 4 steps compared to 2 on the 83/84).

I found out that you can leave the Nspire in radians and you can just add the degree symbol to get answers based in degrees (i.e. sin(30 degrees) = 1/2). So I thought I would just have my students use that, especially since it would mean my Calculus students wouldn't need to remember to change back to radians before they did their work.

The issue I'm facing now though is trying to find the angle and convert it to degrees. An example from my notes from this past week: we have tan(x) = 300/50. If we just do tan^-1(300/50), we'll get an answer in radians. I tried doing a Google search, and the only thing I could find is doing this: (tan^-1(300/50)) r > dd . I assume that the r > dd means "radians convert to degrees" but it seems horribly clunky and inefficient.

So my question is this: is there an easier way to find the angle in degrees when necessary? If so, please share it, as I'd like to make this as easy on my students as possible. Thanks in advance for your time and help.

Andrew Murphy

[Tony]

I have been doing this for years, this how I take care of it.

The calculator is always stored with Radians as the default mode.
First, I never allow students use the Scratch Pad! This is where I get
the most problems from student work.
I have the students in Trigonometry (when using Degrees) quickly change
to Degree mode, but I do NOT set as default.

i.e., Home|5|2|down|right|down|enter|enter

This sets the open document pages being used into Degree mode; at the
end of the period when students clear document Home|1|No, the calculator
reverts to the standard default of radians.

As to any other short cut I do not know other than multiplying by 180*PI.

Tony

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[JB]

Hi, what I do is make a new document and add a calculator and graph page. Then, change the settings and graph settings to degrees and save it and call it "degree.tns". When they need degrees, they use this, when they need radians, use the calculator as normal.