My best mistake this week was not paying close enough attention to the differences between special triangles. I was treating all right triangles the same and getting lost when solving, especially when radicals were involved. We’ve been learning how to work with 30°-60°-90° and 45°-45°-90° triangles, and how each of these has specific side ratios that help us solve problems faster. What helps me still is using SOH C.AH TOA and the Pythagorean Theorem but now we’re also expected to recognize patterns and use radicals more confidently. We also practice finding angles from sides, and sides from angles, using trig functions and inverse trig. It took me a bit to connect all the pieces, but understanding these patterns makes solving much easier. This mistake taught me to slow down, look at the triangle type, and use what I already know, like I said in the last post.
