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> So the use of the radian can simplify a lot many pen and paper symbolic transformations, but it is rarely, if ever, beneficial in numeric algorithms.

If only computers could do a bit of symbolic algebraic manipulations before issuing the machine code.

Wait, isn't that what optimizing compilers can do? That requires an optimization across library calls and thus a form of inlining, which doesn't see far fetched for a math library call. Or some optimizations can't be done due to floating point error propagation (which could be relaxed)?



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