Why are you taught to measure angles in degrees, only to have to switch to radians later on?
by 
Luc Thiet Thuan
ANSWERS: 3
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Because you have to use radians to measure other things. It's just a necessary conversion.
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Well, a quarter turn is 90 degrees, and most languages have common phrases like "do a 180", and so on. Degrees are just much more intuitive in day-to-day situations. You wouldn't want to have to decode a road sign that says "Pi/8 incline ahead". But radians are useful in maths, programming, engineering and such because they tie in with the trigonometric functions.
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The Babylonians were among the first to use trigonometry and astronomy. They understood that there were approximately 360 days in a year, based upon the movement of stars around the Pole Star of the time. This seemed like a logical measurement to use when dealing with rotations/circles. Theor calculations used 360 degrees in a cricle and they built very precise buildings/objects using such units. Such calculations have been made until the early 18th century; when the 'radian' was introduced. This new means of measurement seemed more applicable to more complicated calculations, the trigonometric functions are more 'elegant'. So until the necessity of using complex trigonometric functions it is not taught to use what has become to appear to be a quite confusing measurement system. When using the more complicated functions it is assumed that you are able to comprehend this system proficiently and thus speed up calculations. Basically, it is an institution that is only considered obsolete when dealing with calculations more complicated than every day practical endeavours.
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