Mastering Trig Identities: Strategies & Tips

[Miike012]

Homework Statement

I have been practicing proving trig. ident. for the past couple of days... although I am getting better... I wanted to ask are there any strategies that I should be aware of to make the process easier ?

Homework Equations

The Attempt at a Solution

 

[symbolipoint]

Learn which ones are most essential, and memorize them and practice proving them. Also, unfortunately, you may need to study Trigonometric identities more than 3 times, unless you are just gifted with this; but apparently you've not found yourself to be. Just work at it longer and more frequently. Just studying trigonometry identities for a few days and then ignoring them from after that will not be enough.

 

[Miike012]

Learn which ones are most essential, and memorize them and practice proving them. Also, unfortunately, you may need to study Trigonometric identities more than 3 times, unless you are just gifted with this; but apparently you've not found yourself to be. Just work at it longer and more frequently. Just studying trigonometry identities for a few days and then ignoring them from after that will not be enough.

Ive been studying the trig identities for the past three days... I've memorized sin, cos, tan, cosec, sec, and cot, and their reciprocal. And tan = sin/cos and cot = cos/sin
and sin^2 + cos^2 = 1
and sec^2 = 1 + tan
and cosec^2 = i + cot...

I know many of them... are there more I should memorize...?

 

[tiny-tim]

https://www.physicsforums.com/library.php?do=view_item&itemid=18"

 

[Miike012]

Hmm interesting... havnt seen those ones yet. So I understand... what are the "x" and "y" in parenthesis?


sin(x+y) = SinxCosy + CosxSiny

 

[tiny-tim]

they're angles

(later, you'll find that sin and cos, particularly, turn up all over the place, not just in geometry, so its quite usual to see sinx or sint )