Trigonometry for Dummy Carpenters

basic trigonometric functions

Today's DotD nomination is a little different from the normal post in the Leaf Group family of niche sites. The topic is pretty generic, the subject is pretty much wide open – "How to Use Trigonometry in Carpentry" – and it sort of looks as if eHowian Ezmeralda Lee got much of what she tried to say correct. In this case, however, we're looking at the presentation of the Lee's information, because between Ez and her CE (probably another J-school grad jonesing for pennies), this so-called answer is well-nigh worthless.

When Lee first published this dreck at eHow.com back in 2008 (under the name Civita Dyer), the first "step" in her inane How-to went like this:

"Learn the trigonometric function for a right triangle:Sine of angle = Opposite/hypotenuseCosine of angle = Adjacent/hypotenuseTangent of angle = Opposite/adjacent."

Yeah, that's exactly what was printed. Dyer / Lee didn't even bother to explain what "opposite," "adjacent," and "hypotenuse" referred to; just blasted those terms into cyberspace without explanation. That was bad enough, but in the post's latest incarnation, Leaf Group's lost all the division operators. Now her post says,

"Learn the trigonometric function for a right triangle. sine of the Angle = opposite hypotenuse cosine of the Angle = adjacent hypotenuse tangent of the Angle = opposite Adjacent."

Now we ask you: is that worthless or what? Never mind, we know the answer.

Ezmeralda / Civita didn't do her readers any favors with her example, either. Here's one of her steps from the 2008 original:

"Determine the length of the hypotenuse, or support. Use the Pythagorean theorem: a^2 + b^2 = c^248^2 + 33.5^2 = c^2c^2 = 3426.25c = 58.5 inches"

We think it might have helped had she used some white space and a little more punctuation to clarify her text. Whatever, here's the same step from the current version, supposedly updated in 2017:

"When trying to determine the length of the hypotenuse you would use the Pythagorean theorem: a2 + b2 = c2 1002 + 1422 = c2 c2 = 30164 c = 173.68..."

Wait, what? Where did a2 and b2 come from? and what's that 30164? Well, we figured it out: what Ezmeralda / Civita actually wanted to say was

100² + 142² = c²
c² = 30164
c = 173.68

Let's be honest, though: you shouldn't have to have been a math major in college to figure out what this moron is trying to say. Between Lee / Dyer's nearly useless writing and the half-witted output from Leaf Group's transfer algorithm, we were pretty confused about who should get the Dumbass of the Day award. We're gonna give it to Ezmeralda, though, since her name's on it.

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