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The term "trigonometry" was derived from Greek τρίγωνον trigōnon, "triangle" and μέτρον metron, "measure". [3]The modern words "sine" and "cosine" are derived from the Latin word sinus via mistranslation from Arabic (see Sine and cosine § Etymology).
Trigonometry was still so little known in 16th-century northern Europe that Nicolaus Copernicus devoted two chapters of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium to explain its basic concepts. Driven by the demands of navigation and the growing need for accurate maps of large geographic areas, trigonometry grew into a major branch of mathematics. [27]
These endeavors culminated in the eventual discovery of the power series expansions of the sine and cosine functions by Madhava of Sangamagrama (c. 1350 – c. 1425), the founder of the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics, and the tabulation of a sine table by Madhava with values accurate to seven or eight decimal places.
Hipparchus (/ h ɪ ˈ p ɑːr k ə s /; Greek: Ἵππαρχος, Hípparkhos; c. 190 – c. 120 BC) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician.He is considered the founder of trigonometry, [1] but is most famous for his incidental discovery of the precession of the equinoxes. [2]
These are claimed to first appear in his 1608 edition of Trigonometria in the added trigonometric tables [5] and can also be found in the 1612 edition. [6] However, others argue that the use of the '.' symbol only constitute a way of grouping numbers and that the mixed use of decimal points and fractions as well as multiple decimal points do ...
The table of chords, created by the Greek astronomer, geometer, and geographer Ptolemy in Egypt during the 2nd century AD, is a trigonometric table in Book I, chapter 11 of Ptolemy's Almagest, [1] a treatise on mathematical astronomy.
— Louisiana students Ne’Kiya Jackson and Calcea Johnson discovered a new way to prove the 2,000-year-old Pythagorean theorem using trigonometry, formerly thought impossible by experts.
In 1551 Rheticus produced a tract titled Canon of the Science of Triangles, the first publication of six-function trigonometric tables (although the word trigonometry was not yet coined). [10] This pamphlet was to be an introduction to Rheticus' greatest work, a full set of tables to be used in angular astronomical measurements. [16]