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I'm just wondering if anyone knows of any good books that focus on trigonometric equations and solving them.

I'm thinking of using Trigonometry by Saul and Gelfand.

user164403
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  • Unlike the other high school books by Gelfand, this particular one is not just a translation of the Russian version. I personally find the Russian version better. However, I don't actually know of any better ones in English. – user180040 Oct 03 '14 at 01:35

2 Answers2

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The text by Gelfand and Saul is an excellent trigonometry text. It covers theory and applications, while giving the motivated reader the tools to solve hard problems. However, its scope is much larger than simply solving equations.

N. F. Taussig
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  • The contest I'm preparing for mentions a specific focus on knowing trigonometric graphs, identities, and equations. Would it be advisable to skip over all geometric content, and instead to focus on algebraic applications of trigonometric concepts? – user164403 Oct 03 '14 at 01:35
  • Look at past contests to see if the trigonometry questions are about geometry or not. – user180040 Oct 03 '14 at 01:39
  • The trig question is something like, determine all angles between 0 and 360 degrees such that log[2](-3 sin theta) = 2log[2](cos theta) + 1, where [2] is subscript notation. – user164403 Oct 03 '14 at 01:57
  • These kinds of things can in principle be done without geometry. However, geometry gives you good intuition for things. If you already know the basics of what the trigonometric functions are, it would be okay to go straight to the algebraic part and refer back to the geometry only when you encounter something you don't know about. – user180040 Oct 03 '14 at 02:06
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There's a book relating to math contests: Precalculus Rusckzyk/Crawford with a solution manual. It's quite in depth but interesting.

Alexander
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