I know that Buzz can evaluate trig functions. I can, for example use tan($anglea$*pi/180) to calculate the tangent of an angle in degrees. Since Buzz knows sine, cosine, and tangent, I would expect it to be able to also calculate the inverse functions. Unfortunately, I cannot get it to work.
I've tried:
tan^-1(.5)
tan^(-1)(.5) in case it wasn't seeing the 1 as part of the exponent
arctan(.5)
Of course I was trying to display the answer so I could double-check that it was working so I used $eval(). All of these options return NaN, which I've come to learn means Not a Number. It seems that either I'm coding it wrong, or Buzz doesn't understand inverse trig functions. Can someone please offer some guidance for how/if I can get this to work?
You might consider this an extension of the last comment by Jeremy Walker in THIS POST from last spring. We need a list of functions somewhere on this site or built into Buzz with context to show formatting/usage. Otherwise I'm left to guess what functions Buzz knows and how to get them to work properly.
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UPDATE: I was able to figure out inverse functions (asin, acos, atan). The way I found the answer was to log into BRAIN HONEY. Then I opened an assessment and went to the advanced editor. While in the advanced editor, I clicked on the help (?) button. Buried in there (but I was able to search with ctrl-F) was a list of available functions.
Can you please make this (and other help documentation) available through Buzz and/or this Help Center? There are so many small issues that I (and other teachers) come across that could be solved with a little research instead of having to post here and wait for a response or submitting a ticket.
A few quick examples besides inverse trig functions would be the difference between using # or 0 when displaying the result of an $eval(). Or knowing to use eval() for number, and exact expression question types, but not for equivalent expression.