Precal History of Trig

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Paula Faur

Mrs. Montomery

Pre-Calculus H 3rd

March 3rd, 2017

TRIG THROUGH TIME

Paula Faur
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Trig Through Time

Trigonometry is the backbone of calculus. It has been around since 2000 B.C. in

Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics. The word trigonometry comes from the Greek word

trigonometria, meaning "triangle measuring". Ancient cultures had theorems of the ratios of

sides of triangles for centuries. However, they lacked the idea of angle measure so they were

restricted to studying just the sides of triangles. The Egyptians used trigonometry to build the

pyramids; astronomers used them to study the heavens. The ancient Greek and Hellenistic

cultures used chords. A chord is the line that crosses from one end of an arc to another. The

formula is chord a = 2sin(a/2) Consequentially, all the theorems that are known to us today were

also known to the Greeks in chord form. The first trigonometric table was made by Hipparchus

of Nicaea , now known as "the father of trigonometry." Hipparchus was the first to record the

corresponding values of arc and chord for a series of angles. The use of 360 degrees for a full

circle may come from Hipparchus. He was probably inspired by Hypsicles who had earlier

divided the day into 360 parts, a division of the day that may have been suggested by Babylonian

astronomy. It is due to the Babylonian sexagesimal numeral system that each degree is divided

into sixty minutes and each minute is divided into sixty seconds. Menelaus of Alexandria wrote

three books, all called the spherica. In Book I, he made an argument for spherical triangles that

are like the Euclidean basis for plane triangles. He established is that the sum of the angles of a

spherical triangle is greater than 180°.[8] Book II of Sphaerica applies spherical geometry to

astronomy, and Book III holds the "theorem of Menelaus".


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Later, Claudius Ptolemy expanded on Chords in a Circle in his work Almagest. The Almagest is

primarily a work on astronomy, and astronomy relies on trigonometry. Ptolemy also discovered

the half angle formula.

India also plays an important part in trigonometry. In the fourth and fifth century, there

were written some important mathematical works, the Siddhantas. These literary works defined

the relationship between an angle and the chord, and defined sine, cosine, and inverse sine.

Mathematician, Madhava paved the way for the analysis of trigonometric functions and their

infinite series expansions. He developed the concepts of the power series and Taylor series, and

produced the power series expansions of sine, cosine, tangent, and arctangent. He also gave the

power series of π, radius, diameter, and circumference of a circle in terms of trigonometric

functions. His works were expanded by his followers at the Kerala School up to the 16th century.

Indian Mathematics were translated into Arab languages. According to E. S. Kennedy, it

was after this development in Islamic mathematics that "the first real trigonometry emerged, in

the sense that only then did the object of study become the spherical or plane triangle, its sides

and angles." In the early 9th century AD, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī ,a pioneer in

spherical trigonometry, made sine and cosine tables, and the first table of tangents. In 830 AD,

Habash al-Hasib al-Marwazi produced the first table of cotangents. Muhammad ibn Jābir al-

Harrānī al-Battānī discovered the reciprocal functions of secant and cosecant, and produced the

first table of cosecants for each degree from 1° to 90°. By the 10th century AD, Muslim

mathematicians were using all six trigonometric functions.


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Although the Chinese excelled in other fields of mathematics such as geometry and

complex algebraic formulas, trigonometry was not as widely studied as in the earlier Greek,

Hellenistic, Indian and Islamic worlds. Instead, the early Chinese used an empirical substitute

known as chong cha, for the use of plane trigonometry in using the sine, the tangent, and the

secant were known. However, this state of lack of trigonometry in China slowly began to change

during the Song Dynasty, where Chinese mathematicians began to express greater emphasis for

the need of spherical trigonometry in calendrical science and astronomical calculations. Shen

Kuo used trigonometric functions to solve the mathematical problems of chords and arcs. he

created an approximation of the arc s of a circle given the diameter d, sagitta v, and length c of

the chord subtending the arc, the length of which he approximated as s=c+(2v2)/2. Sal Restivo

writes that Shen's work in the lengths of arcs of circles provided the basis for spherical

trigonometry developed in the 13th century by the mathematician and astronomer Guo Shoujing.

As we can see, trigonometry took many years and many different cultures to form into

the wonderful subject we know today. From ancient cultures Greek, Hellenistic, Indian, Arabs, to

modern western life, trigonometry has been a long journey. It is not only a class you take

because you need it to graduate, trigonometry is a logical way of looking at the world that has

brought us all together.


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Source List

• Boyer (1991), page 252

• Joseph (2000b, pp.383–84)

• Toomer, Gerald J. (1998). Ptolemy's Almagest. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00260-6

• Needham, Volume 3, 108

• Gingerich, Owen (April 1986). "Islamic astronomy". Scientific American. 254

• O'Connor, J.J., and E.F. Robertson, "Trigonometric functions", MacTutor History of

Mathematics Archive. (1996)

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