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In 1551 Rheticus produced a tract titled Canon of the Science of Triangles, the first publication of six-function trigonometric tables (although the word trigonometry was not yet coined). [10] This pamphlet was to be an introduction to Rheticus' greatest work, a full set of tables to be used in angular astronomical measurements.
Trigonometry has been noted for its many identities, that is, equations that are true for all possible inputs. [83] Identities involving only angles are known as trigonometric identities. Other equations, known as triangle identities, [84] relate both the sides and angles of a given triangle.
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The oldest and most elementary definitions are based on the geometry of right triangles and the ratio between their sides. The proofs given in this article use these definitions, and thus apply to non-negative angles not greater than a right angle. For greater and negative angles, see Trigonometric functions.
The uniqueness and the zeros of trigonometric series was an active area of research in 19th century Europe. First, Georg Cantor proved that if a trigonometric series is convergent to a function on the interval [,], which is identically zero, or more generally, is nonzero on at most finitely many points, then the coefficients of the series are all zero.
Geometry is used extensively in trigonometry. Angle – the angle is the figure formed by two rays, called the sides of the angle, sharing a common endpoint, called the vertex of the angle. Angles formed by two rays lie in a plane, but this plane does not have to be a Euclidean plane.
Ordinary trigonometry studies triangles in the Euclidean plane .There are a number of ways of defining the ordinary Euclidean geometric trigonometric functions on real numbers, for example right-angled triangle definitions, unit circle definitions, series definitions [broken anchor], definitions via differential equations [broken anchor], and definitions using functional equations.
The Opus palatinum de triangulis of Georg Joachim Rheticus, a student of Copernicus, was probably the first in Europe to define trigonometric functions directly in terms of right triangles instead of circles, with tables for all six trigonometric functions; this work was finished by Rheticus' student Valentin Otho in 1596.