Trigonometry and Luck

   It’s been four years since  I took Math17, but would you believe that it was only an hour ago that I understood how trigonometric relationships were derived?

I was helping Allen with his Math17 problem set (more of rewriting his answers actually because he lost his copy due to unfortunate circumstances or to put it easily — his stupidity and carelessness =P) and that was when I finally got half angle relationship and the like between trigonometric identities.

If my professor reads this he might actually force me to repeat Math17 for the nth time to fully comprehend the CONCEPTS and not just the MECHANICAL way of solving problems. I’m not proud to admit that I haven’t passed any exam in trigonometry, and I think it was my performance in algebra that got me to pass the course.

I’ve been in the College of Engineering for 5 years now, and now I consider myself lucky to have survived that long without really being good in numbers and analyzing problems.