I just started learning msp, I wanted to see what does the cycle~ output, so I patch it to the number~ and print out all those momentary values. they are all float numbers jumping between -1 and 1. The help doc says it is signal value, but what signal value exactly? like the amplitude?
The values of the number~ outputs:
A signal consists of 44100 values per second, and number~ outputs only 10 of these values per second.
So the values you are seeing are snapshots of the output of cycle~, which produces a sine wave, but a very fast one, 301 periods per second in your example. So the values you see will not seem to form a pattern.
More info can be found in the docs.
Tip: if you change the frequency of cycle~ in your example to say 1 instead of 301, you will notice the sine pattern in the printed output.