What id Trigonometry?

Trigonometry is a branch of mathematics that studies relationships between the sides and angles of triangles. Trigonometry is found all throughout geometry, as every straight-sided shape may be broken into as a collection of triangles. Further still, trigonometry has astoundingly intricate relationships to other branches of mathematics, in particular complex numbers, infinite series, logarithms and calculus.

The word trigonometry is a 16th-century Latin derivative from the Greek words for triangle (trigōnon) and measure (metron). Though the field emerged in Greece during the third century B.C., some of the most important contributions (such as the sine function) came from India in the fifth century A.D. Because early trigonometric works of Ancient Greece have been lost, it is not known whether Indian scholars developed trigonometry independently or after Greek influence. According to Victor Katz in “A History of Mathematics (3rd Edition)” (Pearson, 2008), trigonometry developed primarily from the needs of Greek and Indian astronomers.