# Good book recommendations on trigonometry

I need to find a good book on trigonometry, I was using trigonometry demystified but I got sad when I read this line:

Now that you know how the circular functions are defined, you might wonder how the values are calculated. The answer: with an electronic calculator!

I know a book which seems to be really good: Loney's Plane Trigonometry, I'm just not sure if the book is up to date.

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You might want to look at the following book references:

• Trigonometry, I.M. Gelfand, Mark Saul

• Trigonometry Refresher (Dover Books on Mathematics), A. Albert Klaf, Mathematics

• Schaum's Outline of Trigonometry, 5th Edition, Robert Moyer, Frank Ayres

• Trigonometry, 8th Edition, Ron Larson (\$)

• Advanced Trigonometry, by C.V. Durell, A. Robson

You might also want to review online items. For example:

Enjoy!

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How helpful! Great list, and not overwhelming! – amWhy May 1 '13 at 0:23
It was made community wiki (sometimes book recommendation requests are considered "soft" or having no one correct answer, so although they are relevant to the site, sometimes it is flagged (some users do this) to make it CW...after which, no reputation is gained for the asker or the user. A person can also make his/her answer community wiki... – amWhy May 1 '13 at 0:55

Plane Trigonometry by S.L. Loney is the best book for trigonometry.The concepts are explained in a very good manner in the book.

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Michael Corral's Trigonometry is excellent, building geometric foundations before transitioning to analytical aspects. It also helps that it's absurdly good-looking. It comes with a GNU Free Documentation License too.

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+1 for a very good free source I discovered last year! – Mathemagician1234 Feb 25 '15 at 8:34

Are you only interested in a Book, can I suggest a material that has lecture notes? A video? :) It has been an excellent learning material for many I know of.

ThinkWell Trignometry

As for a book, try this out as well:

• Plane and Spherical Trigonometry
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Yes. Anything that teaches me trigonometry will suffice. – Voyska Feb 22 '13 at 8:24

An underrated source that's also low priced is Precalculus In A Nutshell by George F. Simmons: This was the last of the amazing textbooks by Simmons, which include such classics as An Introduction To Topology and Modern Analysis and Differential Equations with Applications and Historical Notes. Each of these books is marked by Simmons’ unique combination of detailed exposition, lively prose and conceptual clarity. This is his last and most elementary book and it’s no exception. Simmons’ purpose of this beautiful book is to condense into a readable, lucid treatment what he deemed essential for high school students to learn before learning basic calculus.He covers just what he deems necessary in algebra, geometry and trigonometry for mastering calculus-and I think his choice of topics is very good indeed. I think you'll find it very helpful.

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I also suggest the thinkwell but as a supplement not the main course. Larson is good but ridiculously expensive and klaf & durell are a little too much if don't already know something. Gelfand & Loney are generally a more rigorous and conceptually clear treatment of the subject. I have one other suggestion, which is free "Stitz & Zeager, trigonometry". This is also very good, only complaint a little dry and the appearance too spartan, even for a math book !

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What about Trigonometry by Charles P. McKeague and Mark D. Turner?

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Nothing changed much in basic Trigonometry for a century. Of Loney's book genre is another:

Henry Sinclair Hall, Samuel Ratcliffe Knight, Macmillan and Company, 1893 - Plane trigonometry - 404 pages

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If you want to learn trigonometry from basic level then S.L.Loney's Plane Trigonometry is the best one. It takes us through various levels of understanding trigonometry gradually without the feel of difficulty.

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I would recommend Trigonometry, 3rd Edition by Cynthia Young, ISBN-13: 978-0470648025 and the Student Solution Manual by Mark McKibben, ISBN-13: 978-1118101148

The explanations are very clear and the material builds on itself in a logical progressive way.

She teaches you in a way that a teacher in a classroom would explain how to solve a problem step by step by stating in a sentence what is to be done mathematically and then on the same line presents the mathematical equivalent so that you understand each step in the solution process until the answer is obtained.

The most important information is summarized at the end of every module for quick reference. And, general concepts are summarized on the front and back inside cover of the textbook.

Learning math involves practice and she provides many problems for each short segment of material. Problems progress from simple to more difficult in the problem set.

She includes a couple of problems with each problem set called "Catch the Mistake" which are common mistakes that students often make.

Answers to most of the odd problems are given in the back of the book, but I would also recommend purchasing the Student Solution Manual (which provides answers to all of the odd problems) since it is not always obvious (to me at least) how the solution was obtained for some of the more difficult problems.

She also has many short illustrations in the margin of the textbook of how to use a Texas Instruments calculator which can be very helpful to those not familiar with the graphing calculator.

There are also other very good Trigonometry only textbooks, but this is a good one to start with and a motivated individual can teach himself/herself Trigonometry without an instructor by diligently studying this textbook.

There are two appendices including a section on basic algebraic concepts and another on conic sections.

No math book is perfect and students with different personalities or learning preferences may prefer other textbooks and that is fine. Nevertheless, if one learns the material in this textbook, he/she has learned a lot of Trigonometry.

Please note that this book devotes itself to Trigonometry, however, and you may prefer a book that combines Algebra with Trigonometry or a Precalculus mathematics textbook which includes other material along with Trigonometry.

Even if you may be using another textbook, this book would be very useful for explaining concepts that may not be fully explained in the other textbook.

Before using this textbook, one should be able to perform basic mathematical and algebraic manipulations so that this is not a stumbling block to learning Trigonometry.

The textbook has a considerable number of pages, but one need not work every problem nor cover all of the subjects in the textbook.

While some of the material is needed to understand concepts later on in the book (especially at first), this is not always the case, so you shouldn't rule out this textbook just because of the number of pages in it.

Basic concepts are explained very well and this is tremendously valuable to the reader even if one skips sections of it.

If you buy both the textbook and the student solution manual the books are not cheap, but there are probably many cheaper yet good quality used copies of these same books available online.

I hope that this helps!

Guest123

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