Sines And Cosines are history !
I am not drunk and babbling gibberish. This is news. One fundamental theory which aims to make the use of trigonometry easier and more accurate. Proposed by Dr Norman Wildberger, a professor at University of New South Wales, this theory replaces angles to which we are so much used to by now, with a concept called as ‘spread’.
Here’s an excerpt from an article about this theory.
Established by the ancient Greeks and Romans, trigonometry is used in surveying, navigation, engineering, construction and the sciences to calculate the relationships between the sides and vertices of triangles.
“Generations of students have struggled with classical trigonometry because the framework is wrong,” says Wildberger, whose book is titled Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry (Wild Egg books).
Dr Wildberger has replaced traditional ideas of angles and distance with new concepts called “spread” and “quadrance”.
These new concepts mean that trigonometric problems can be done with algebra,” says Wildberger, an associate professor of mathematics at UNSW.
He has also written a book called ‘The Divine Proportions : Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry‘ by N J Wildberger. There is a chapter available for preview.
On first look, the concepts are straightforward in a logical sense. But i do not see how it simplifies and eliminates the calculations that are presently being done with sines and cosines. Well that’s just me and i could be wrong ! Maybe this is a revolutionary theory that is going to change how we look at things in the future.