Mistakes regarding polar coordinates

From Applied Science
  • The most common mistake is to confuse Cartesian with polar when plotting a graph. For example: everyone is familiar with (x, y). Therefore a common mistake is to think that radius goes along x and angle is somewhere along y. Suppose we have (2, 45°). A clueless person thinks x = 2 and y = 45. I have to admit here that I made this mistake and more than once. I think that the origin of this mistake is, ironically, the fact that, a lot of times, polar coordinates are overlapped with the Cartesian coordinates. This is done mostly due to the fact that it's easier to think on distances with XY coordinates.