How did the sine, cosine, and tangent come to be?

LMAO, shaddup :D Im at york actually btw. And I dropped my math in gr12. So be quiet :D

I think it was the same way they came up with pi, lots of trial and error with a triangle they knew the angles of and checked whether they fitted

Not sure, I don’t think anybody can really explain how a theory is discovered. A long wait of trial and error I suppose. I do know that Sine, Cosine, Tangent (Trigonometry) was supposedly first used by a man named Hipparchus, but people think it dates back to ancient Egyptian and ancient Indian times. I think it’s really interesting that people thousands of years ago came up with these amazing mathematical and scientific theories, yet these days everybody is like ‘Oh yeah in the old days people ate each other and lived in caves…’. Some people were (and still are of course) exceptionally gifted in the academic field. It’s pretty amazing how somebody’s brain worked that out… they didn’t have calculators let alone big abacus’ back then…

Well according to Wikipidia, (http://funadvice.com/r/14r4q2mufql, Trig functions as we know them today where developed by Hipparchus of Nicaea (180–125 BC) and Ptolemy of Roman Egypt (90–165 AD), but the idea dates a long time before that.

lol :P