For the second assignment of this course, I chose to research history of the origins of Trigonometry. In my presentation, I highlighted the Greek astronomer Hipparchus of Rhodes who tabulated the ratio of the chords of a curcle to the radius of 3438 associating it with the central angle. I was not able to provide a reason as to why he worked with the radius of 3438 at the time of my presentation so I will write th reason in my blog - it was because the circumference of this circle (21600) is the same as 360x60 - this means that every degree of this circle would represent one minute of the hour.
Next, I highlighted the Indians who realized the efficiency of working with half chords and double the central angle. Indians started tabulating half chords instead. There was also a little pice about where we get the name of the sine ratio from, which was very interesting for me. Being able to connect it to Sanskrit and Hindi, I'm able to reaffirm my understanding of sine. Lastly, I talked about Al-Battani, who introduced tangent and cotangent in a right triangle. Researching about him was eye opening for me as I realized that my education in India was full of inplicit bias against the middle eastern and Islamic contributions to math. I was very happy to finally learn greater details about Islamic Golden age not just in my presentation, but from my peers as well.
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