berlin

Thank you so much!! I feel extremely enlightened; when I read it all of the sudden every road block in my mind was cleared. But, then when I looked at my trig homework, I saw a problem where the angle theta and the opposite and adjacent are all unknown, and the only thing given is the hypotenuse and the alpha angle. I'm guessing that weird sign that my teacher squeezed between the opposite and hypotenuse is the alpha sign, at least... it looks a lot like a Jesus fish... .... okay, sudden religious/mathematical connection just smacked me upside the head but I don't think this is the right place to talk about theology x) What do I do? D:

When I checked my edline and discovered that I had a 'D' in Trigonometry, I wasn't too flustered by the fact that I was doing poorly, but I was flustered most by the fact that I had no idea why I was pressing 'sin', or 'cos', or 'tan'... I know what they mean. I know their reciprocals. But, I don't know when to use them, and always have to look at previous problems, looking for patterns. I probably could memorize the patterns, but would that really be learning trigonometry? I still wouldn't know why I was pressing the function buttons. So, I decided to delve deep into the roots of the subject because History is a subject that I get A's in. I learned about Hipparchus, and his awful rejection of the Heliocentric model of the solar system, and his influence on Ptolemy, who, I know, had great influence on the Church. Also, I learned about cord tables, which I understood. But, I realize that tomorrow I'm going to be sitting in my Trigonometry class, still stumped over why I'm pressing the Sin, Cos, and Tan buttons. Of course, we aren't allowed to learn in trigonometry because we've got to be given tests and classwork... people don't care about learning anymore. They only care about their grade, and that's why everyone's totally fine with just memorizing things. But yeah... Can someone explain to me what a function is? In a way that I can understand... without a billion equations because that's just memorization again. And, how to the Sin, Cos, and Tan functions work? And what are they? Is it possible to draw a picture out for me? :/