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Trigonometric functions

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Abstract

Trigonometry, from the Greek words for triangle and measurement, has been of interest to (at least some) humans for more than four millennia, with early evidence of use in Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, and Greece. The common method of measuring angles in degrees, minutes, and seconds comes from the Babylonian sexagesimal (base-60) number system, although in modern mathematics and computer software, circular measure of radians, where 2π radians is the angle of one complete rotation through a circle, is preferred.

SOH-CAH-TOA: mnemonic device for the trigonometric functions in a right triangle. SOH: sin = opposite/hypotenuse, CAH: cos = adjacent/hypotenuse, TOA: tan = opposite/adjacent.

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Correspondence to Nelson H. F. Beebe .

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Beebe, N.H.F. (2017). Trigonometric functions. In: The Mathematical-Function Computation Handbook. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64110-2_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64110-2_11

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