This is the homepage for the free book Trigonometry, by Michael Corral (Schoolcraft College). If you are looking for the Vector Calculus homepage, go here.
You can download the latest version (2010-05-06) of the book Trigonometry here:
trigbook.pdf
Current changelog: changelog.txt
The book is a PDF file, which requires a PDF viewer such as the freely available Adobe Acrobat Reader or noncommercial software (e.g. Evince, Okular, xpdf) to view it. The book is distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.
You can now buy a printed, bound,
paperback version of the book for $11 plus shipping at the author's storefront on Lulu.com:
http://stores.lulu.com/mecmath
Note: While the PDF version hosted here contains full color graphics, the printed version from Lulu.com contains
grayscale graphics in order to minimize the cost of printing.
For those who want to view and/or compile the book's source files, the LaTeX source code is available here:
trigbook-1.1-src.tar.gz
You will need a relatively recent LaTeX installation to compile the source code. In particular, you will need
a recent CVS version of the TikZ graphics package (at least the 2009-06-02 CVS version), which you can get here:
http://www.texample.net/tikz/builds/.
A build script (trigbook.sh) for Linux/UNIX systems is included for building the PDF file.
See the included README file for more instructions.
Numerical code samples: The code samples from the book (written in Java, Python, Octave) can be downloaded here: trigbook_code.zip. These are the programs listed in Section 6.2 of the book.
Here is a Java applet showing an application of trigonometry to computer graphics (rotations in the xy-coordinate plane), and here is a Java applet demonstrating Thales' Theorem. To use the applets your browser will need at least version 1.4.2 of the Java plugin.
Go here to see a computer program (in the Tcl programming language) for solving triangles.
Book description: This is a text on elementary trigonometry, designed for students who have completed courses in high-school algebra and geometry. Though designed for college students, it could also be used in high schools. The traditional topics are covered, but a more geometrical approach is taken than usual. Also, some numerical methods (e.g. the secant method for solving trigonometric equations) are discussed. A brief tutorial on using Gnuplot to graph trigonometric functions is included.
There are 495 exercises in the book, with answers and hints to selected exercises.
News
(2010-05-06) The book is now listed on the
CLRN Free Digital Textbook Initiative
page. This means that the book met the CLRN (California Learning Resource Network)
review criteria. Also created a changelog for documenting
the updates/corrections to the book.
(2010-04-18) Created a Java applet demonstrating rotations in two dimensions.
(2010-03-28) The book can now be bought as a printed, bound paperback from Lulu.com.
(2010-03-12) Version 1.1 released. The only changes in material are the addition of a section (6.4) on polar coordinates, and a short Sage example was added to Section 6.2.
(2009-08-29) Initial version 1.0 is released.