I've been relearning trigonometry lately by myself for navigation and astronomy; not for work, just curiosity I guess. One book I've really enjoyed is Heavenly Mathematics by Van Bremmelen. It's a spherical trig textbook, but it's written by a math historian who describes how trigonometry was gradually developed over human history and he discusses its early proofs, methods and applications. I have to confess that the historical approach has really helped me develop a more complete mental picture and appreciation of the math itself. Understanding the "how" and "why" of its development, and seeing the early practical need and implementation for some of this stuff has made the topic a lot more engaging.

• shanusmagnus

  today at 5:37 PM

  It seems like you'd get a lot deeper understanding by doing it that way, and be much more able to adapt the knowledge to the real world, vs only knowing how to solve problems in the exact form they were presented to you. I had so many semesters of undergrad math, did fine, but feel like I took basically nothing from it.

• helterskelter

  today at 5:56 PM

  Sorry, author's name was Van Brummelen, not Van Bremmelen.

  • srean

    today at 6:10 PM

    You know you can edit your comment right. You are still in that edit window.

    • helterskelter

      today at 6:21 PM

      Edit window is 10m now.

      • srean

        today at 6:25 PM

        Oh! My bad.

• srean

  today at 5:44 PM

  This is a very entertaining hobby to have. Wishing you a lot of fun.

  Next stop, making sundials and reading astrolabe.

  I was so surprised to know that Chaucer had such interest in the workings of an Astrolabe. It's not much of a surprise if you think that Astrolabe were the pocket GPS, pocket watch, pocket star chart of those times.

  • helterskelter

    today at 6:48 PM

    Honestly I've been thinking about putting some standing stones in my yard to act as solar clock and calendar, maybe doing a lunar calendar as well...

    I don't that's against code (yet).

Full 3 volumes of Free pdfs on IA:

https://archive.org/details/MathematicsItsContentsMethodsAnd...

This is a great book if you already know good amount of Math. It helps you fit things into a bigger picture. Really appreciate the fact that something like this exists.

This is one of the best generalist books on mathematics ever published. I highly recommend it.

The only mathematics books I ever read was textbooks in school but now as adult I want to start from scratch.

• today at 5:49 PM

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