Take THAT communism!

I learned a secret tonight.
An ultra-important, historically significant secret.
Want to know?

I learned what the cosine button on your calculator actually does. No, I don't mean that I learned that I could press the button and it would give me the answer. I learned how to get the answer (approx.) without a calculator.

It's called a Taylor series:

cos(x) = 1 - x^2/2! + x^4/4! - x^6/6! + x^8/8! - . . . to infinity.
You have to use radians instead of degrees. That took me a while.
It's not possible to calculate any of the degree exactly according to this series, however, because it both uses pi (which has no apparent end or pattern) and the equation is infinite.

If you already knew this equation, don't tell me. I consider finally learning it to be a success against the calculator that was ruling my ruler life and would like to pretend I actually learned something tonight that isn't covered in classes often enough. (It wasn't in my trig. class. As it seems to always be the book simply said to press the button.)

Granted, I did read somewhere that the calculator uses a more effective method, but still!

Huzzah! I have won!

While I'm on this tangent (hahaha) I should probably include my recent love for Pascal's work.. the triangle, the wager, etc. Pascal rocks my socks.