Years later I try to test a math equation using the historically defined ARCTAN using MS Excel and find that good old Microsoft decides that they can redefine math to match their own lame definition.

Wake up, lame programmers at MS...the ARCTAN should return the angle in degrees! As does the TAN return the ratio based on degrees. How hard is it to just provide those two functions without creating your own bias towards radians? Converting to radians should be the added work of the user.

Let me guess....the use of degrees must have some licensing cost which MS is not willing to pay in order to push out a cheaper spreadsheet?

MS is losing market share and profitability. Duh.... not a surprise to the more educated users.



On Wednesday, April 23, 2008 8:17:56 AM UTC-7, Chip Pearson wrote:
You can use the ATAN function. Note that all trig functions in Excel work
with Radians, not Degrees. Thus, you may need to use the RADIANS function to
convert degrees to radians or DEGREES to convert radians to degrees. E.g.,

=DEGREES(ATAN(A1))

returns the number of degrees of the angle whose tangent is in cell A1.


--
Cordially,
Chip Pearson
Microsoft Most Valuable Professional
Excel Product Group
Pearson Software Consulting, LLC
www.cpearson.com
(email on web site)




"JmcD" wrote in message
...




On Wednesday, April 23, 2008 8:17:56 AM UTC-7, Chip Pearson wrote:
You can use the ATAN function. Note that all trig functions in Excel work
with Radians, not Degrees. Thus, you may need to use the RADIANS function to
convert degrees to radians or DEGREES to convert radians to degrees. E.g.,

=DEGREES(ATAN(A1))

returns the number of degrees of the angle whose tangent is in cell A1.


--
Cordially,
Chip Pearson
Microsoft Most Valuable Professional
Excel Product Group
Pearson Software Consulting, LLC
www.cpearson.com