Really, 30 or so years ago calculators didn't have trig functions on them.

It has a few pages with different angles and the trig functions evaluated at these angles.

Whenever you have a right triangle, you can use your right-triangle trig functions (sin cos etc..).

Even in Dan's algebra class, students can't build their own trig functions (although that would be cool).

A note on trig functions: There is really nothing too magical about these functions, they simply relate the sides of right triangles to the angle.

Trig Method 1: Trig Tables This is the old way of calculating trig functions.