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Their arguments were couched in language which made Michel jump. The discussion was hot, and neither would give up his chosen curve to his adversary. This scientific dispute lasted so long that it made Michel very impatient. "Now, gentlemen cosines, will you cease to throw parabolas and hyperbolas at each other's heads? I want to understand the only interesting question in the whole affair.
To do him justice, he studied for two or three hours every day, and it was not his fault if he did not advance but his head was confused with technical terms; he mixed all up together, and disparts, sines and cosines, parabolas, tangents, windage, seconds, lines of sight, logarithms, projectiles, and traverse sailing, quadrature, and Gunter's scales, were all crowded together, in a brain which had not capacity to receive the rule of three.
"No, I don't think there's any question as to his identity." "Have you worked it out by mathematics, dad?" Cub inquired. "Yes, by sines and cosines." "What are sines and cosines?" asked Hal. "You'll find out when you go to college and study trigonometry," Mr. Perry replied.
If a woman holds an assistant professorship of mathematics in a university, it is a foregone conclusion that she should fall in love with someone who is proficient in trigonometry and holds his tangents and cosines in high esteem. Happy evenings could then be spent with a book of logarithms and sheets of paper specially cut to accommodate a problem.
To do him justice, he studied for two or three hours everyday, and it was not his fault if he did not advance but his head was confused with technical terms; he mixed all up together, and disparts, sines and cosines, parabolas, tangents, windage, seconds, lines of sight, logarithms, projectiles and traverse sailing, quadrature and Gunter's scales, were all crowded together, in a brain which had not capacity to receive the rule of three.
"There's great virtue in that 'we," said little Hartopp. "You know I take them for trig. McTurk may have some conception of the meaning of it; but Beetle is as the brutes that perish about sines and cosines. He copies serenely from Stalky, who positively rejoices in mathematics." "Why don't you stop it?" said Prout. "It rights itself at the exams.
So it goes on until our parents begin to look up to us because we can chatter of cosines or sketch the foreign policy of Louis XIV. Good! But not a word about the principles of the art of living yet! Only a few detached rules from our parents, to be blindly followed when particular crises supervene. And, indeed, it would be absurd to talk to a schoolboy about the expression of his soul.
Sines, cosines, and tangents, of fractional angles figured profusely in the processes; and in the result courses to be steered would be laid down to an eighth of a point, when to keep a single vessel, let alone a column, steady within half a point was considered good helmsmanship.
"I heard one of them say we were likely to make trouble for them and we ought to be chased away and scared so badly we'd never come around here again, and the others seemed to agree with him." "That sounds like a mystery," said Hal. "I don't believe Mr. Perry would talk mathematics to explain such conversation," Bud declared. "If he did, he'd probably make another pun about sines and cosines.
Kepler next tried if these distances varied as the cosines of the quadrant, and if their motion varied as the sun's, the sine of 90 representing the motion at the sun, and the sine of 0° that at the fixed stars; but in this trial he was also disappointed.
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