SOLUTION: A student is overheard saying :'i dont need to learn trig ratios . I am just going to use Sine and Cosine Laws to Solve problems. Show by example that the student is right. explain

Question 888539: A student is overheard saying :'i dont need to learn trig ratios . I am just going to use Sine and Cosine Laws to Solve problems. Show by example that the student is right. explain advantages and disadvantages to this approach.
Answer by lwsshak3(11628) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
A student is overheard saying :'i dont need to learn trig ratios . I am just going to use Sine and Cosine Laws to Solve problems. Show by example that the student is right. explain advantages and disadvantages to this approach.
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Bad idea!
While it is true you can derive all the remaining ratios from the sin and cos functions, you will be presented with problems that require a working knowledge of relationships between trig functions other than sin or cos. Take for example, the pythagorean identities: tan^2+1=sec^2 and cot^2+1=csc^2.
Some problems are difficult to solve without this knowledge. Also, the graphs of all trig ratios and their reciprocals look quite different from from each other.
As I said, as student learning trig, its a bad idea to to think you only need to learn the sine and cosine laws to solve problems.
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