One of my students started the Trigonometry portion of Grade 11 Functions recently, necessitating my re-acquainting myself with that slice of the Mathematics spectrum. Thanks to Tammy's experiences in high school, I already remembered SOHCAHTOA and its usefulness with right-angled triangles. However, I quickly found that I needed to look up both the Sine Law and Cosine Law, as neither of them were in the easily-accessed part of my memory banks from my own school days.
Those two laws each open up what you can do with triangular shapes quite significantly. First of all, you get to use them on any 3-sided shapes, not just the right-angled ones. Also, you can fairly quickly become familiar with what pieces of data lead you to use which law, as well as recognizing when you simply don't have enough information to proceed.
My student has been doing very well in this unit so far in the exercises he's done with me, which hasn't always been the case with previous topics. It's interesting to see how different topics in Math resonate differently with each student. For people who relate to diagrams or pictures better than words, Trig can be quite a welcome relief. It's also a good combination of memorization (of a few theories and laws) and application (figuring out which formulas to use in each new situation).
I'm quite enjoying it so far and look forward to working through Trig with other students, now that I'm (back) up to speed on it (again).
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1 comment:
Shudder...... cosines....nasty
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