(A new question of the week) Proving a trigonometric identity can be a challenge; sometimes even when we read someone else’s proof, we can fail to see how they came up with a seemingly magical step. We’ll look at two such identities here, and consider how to bridge a gap when we are stuck.
(A new question of the week) Last week we examined how a series of transformations affects the equation of a function, in order to write the equation from a graph, or vice versa. We touched on why it works the way it does, but this is something you need to look at from multiple perspectives …
(A new question of the week) Transformations of functions, which we covered in January 2019 with a series of posts, is a frequent topic, which can be explained in a number of different ways. A recent discussion brought out some approaches that nicely supplement what we have said before. Here, the focus will be on …
Trigonometry can be a powerful tool for solving sides and angles in triangles. But you have to be careful with it! We’ll look at a classic type of error in solving an SSA triangle, get three explanations, and then see how knowing the context of a question can change our answer – to the point …
(A new question of the week) I had a long discussion recently about the Cartesian product of sets, answering questions like, “How is it Cartesian?” and “How is it a product?” I like discussions about the relationships between different concepts, and people who ask these little-but-big questions. We’ll be looking at about a quarter of …