Arctan > 1 newbie question

Question

Good Day,

It has been quite some time since I've had to compute the theta of an angle. But given a right angle:

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I'm trying to compute theta (the slope of the angle). My understanding of trigonometry (as rusty as it is) is that theta = arctan(b/a). So if b = 50 and a = 1811. Then using the windows calculator, 50 / 1811 = 0.027609055770292655991165102153506. Therefore the arctan(b/a) = 1.5814806205083755492980816356377. If my math is correct, how do I translate this value into the slope of the angle? It should be around 30-40 degrees, right?

Answer 1

If you use a C dialect then there a useful function for just this purpose

atan2(y, x);

Answer 2

You've already got the answer: 1.58... deg. Are you asking the right question?

Answer 3

atan2(y, x)

will return you the angle in radians (and successfully cope with the cases where x and/or y are 0).

To convert to degrees apply the following formula:

double degrees = radians * (180 / PI)

Where PI is 3.141592... or math.pi in c#