Journal Eagleartoo's Journal: The day the math died. 1
I doubt there is anyone out there who knows I exist. I don't really make my presence known. But I'm always looking for people that I can gleem information from... and if not that at least starting points.
I started out as a CS major at UT Dallas, and failed miserably, not because I wasn't smart, more than likely because I didn't apply myself, but more than that a lot of what I was trying to grab a hold of was what illuded me.
I passed my AP calculus test and that actually came in handy later, but I made a D in calculus, I blame it on my ability to study and my inability to do trig. My second major failing was in Computer Science. Something so extremely simple as freshman level C++ but again I had no where to begin. I'm very good at math once I got past the algebraic hump of freshman year in high school. (It's tough to be able to look at 47x + 5 = 24 and know the answer without knowing the steps.) But I never felt like I was taught those very very basic steps in C++ about what programming did (I understand it more now) but I was drowning in something I didn't understand.
Really the point of me telling anyone this is that if there is any book that discusses trig as a subject rather than a series of functions I'd love to kick that back into high gear.
I hate getting stuck with inaccuracies of "that looks right" whenever I know there is an equation to "make it right"
COMMENTS? PLEASE?
The problem with trig (Score:1)
But my taste is for physics so I "parse" trig problems as physics problems then the functions make sense - resolve vector into lateral and vertical force (cosine and sine respectivley) against a reference frame.
Oh and complex numbers are bonus fun. Electrical circuits use a lot of trig functions but using complex numbers to stuff the trig functions really does make it a lot easier.