Exploring Trigonometric Functions

Posted by Brett Shoelson, December 3, 2010

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Brett's Pick this week is TrigDemo, by Matt Fig.

Matt is one of the more prolific (and popular) authors on the File Exchange; his 36 submissions (to date) have been downloaded a total of 1741 times in the past 30 days. Today's Pick is a very simple, very cool tool for exploring trigonometric functions. With an easy-to-use GUI, one can plot any equation of the form y(x) = A trig(Bx + C) + D, where "trig" can be any one of: {'sine', 'cosine', 'tangent', 'cosecant', 'secant', 'cotangent'}. Then, with easy-to-use radio buttons and sliders, one can interactively change that trigonometric function, or see the effects of changing any of the variables A, B, C, or D.

I like to think that MATLAB has a role in teaching mathematics at a variety of levels. Matt's GUI helps trigonometry students visualize and master the fundamentals (and provides a refresher for those of us who took trigonometry longer ago than we care to admit!) Simply, a very nice utility.

Take TrigDemo for a test spin, and let us know what you think, or leave a comment for Matt here.

Published with MATLAB® 7.11