I am using three trigonometry textbooks in my trip through trig. They are: TEACH YOURSELF TRIGONOMETRY, by P. Abbott, revised by Hugh Neill, which I refer to as the "BritBook" because it is of British origin, SCHAUM'S OUTLINES: TRIGONOMETRY Third Edition, by Robert Moyer and Frank Ayres, Jr., which I refer to as "Red Spine" because of the colorful design of the cover, and TRIGONOMETRY: THE EASY WAY by Douglas Downing, PhD, published by Barron's Educational Series. All three are available at Borders Books, which is where I got them.

I use the BritBook as my main text. This is because the BritBook is smaller and lighter than the other ones, and thus I can put it in my briefcase and carry it around and on trips without adding extra weight. Also, it seems to be clearer and more concise than the others. It has a kind of stiff-upper-lip impersonal quality to it, with measurements in centimeters and meters, and British spelling of words. The problem sets put me into a landscape of hillocks, towers, flagpoles, swampy areas, chimney stacks, windswept coastlines, church steeples, rivers, and bridges, all eminences casting shadows in the pale northern sunlight. One problem is set in wartime and asks (using given data) how far a soldier can go along a road A without being in range of enemy gunners, and what length of the road is within range. The BritBook's conciseness means that I do the intermediate steps of solving their examples, and so I have added quite a lot of notes in coloured pencil on the pages.

"Red Spine," an American production (McGraw Hill Schaum's Outline series, over 30 million sold), is on the other hand, obsessively helpful. It prints work-throughs for all of its example problems, and puts the answers to the problems right alongside the problem. Thus to keep myself from seeing it, I must cover the answer with a sheet of thick paper as I work down the page. Despite the large (11" x 8") size of the book, Red Spine's printing is rather small and difficult for my aging eyes to read. I am currently using Red Spine for my introduction to vectors, since the Brits don't cover it in their book.

"Ruritania" is my least favorite of the three. Despite its title, it is not an "easy way" and they assume that some accessible teacher is working along with the student using the book. It also assumes that the student already knows many basic concepts which this student (i.e. me) may not know. It has several problems involving creating abstract formulas from other already proven abstract formulas. This is something I am not much good at; I do much better when I'm dealing with concrete and specific number values rather than just general letter stand-ins. The most annoying thing about "Ruritania," which is why I give it that name, is that it is presented as a fantasy story featuring various characters in a somewhat 19th-century-style kingdom. They are depicted in cartoons and their story involves having them "discover" trigonometry and what it is all about. There's a king, a lady Professor, a sad-sack accountant standing in for the student, a friendly giant, an inventor/adventurer, a builder, a mischievous gremlin, and other stock figures. This may sound charming, but it's not, and I keep feeling sorry for these fantasy folk who were created solely for the purpose of serving as mathematical illustrations. (Set them free! Let them live their own lives!) This same crew is also featured in Barron's study books for algebra and calculus. I will have to spend a bit more time with them in Ruritania, because Barron's trigonometry text has a fairly good section on vectors. I am going slowly, as usual, so my vector arrow isn't very long.

There are many Websites devoted to trigonometry, mercifully free of fantasy characters. One of my favorites is Fergus Murray's trigonometry page which has beautiful colors and designs. Dave's Short Course in Trigonometry from David Joyce at Clark University is also good and the applets are fun to play with.

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