Publisher's Synopsis
From the Preface.
The extended calculations required by some of the applications of trigonometry are laborious even to experienced computers, and to beginners are often a fruitful source of discouragement. Experience in making calculations and familiarity with the formulas employed suggest methods of arrangement by which skilful computers shorten their work and save much of their time. The aim should always be to secure the results to the required degree of accuracy with a minimum expenditure of time and labor. So far as the mechanical part of the work is concerned, the principal factors leading to this end are the proper arrangement of the formulas employed, the use of conveniently arranged tables having the needed helps for facilitating interpolation, and the use of no more places of decimals than are necessary to secure the desired accuracy in the results.
Orderly arrangement is almost indispensable to correct and rapid computation; on this account the practice of making computations on scraps of paper without systematic arrangement should not be followed. In the beginning, an outline of the entire solution should be made by writing the symbols of the quantities to be used in a vertical column, those to be combined being placed adjacent. In the same solution, turning more than once to the same place in the tables should be avoided, by taking at one opening all the functions of a given angle that may be required, and writing them in their proper places. The tables employed should be conveniently arranged, and, in general, should have auxiliary tables of proportional parts on the margins of the pages, so that the interpolations can easily be made mentally....
