Trigonometry question on reader survey

A readership survey aimed at people who read a collection of blogs and Websites that feature advertising from The Deck contains a trigonometry question. Things are looking up!

trig question solution one

My solution is above, including the question. When I was spending spring afternoons in the pavilion doing maths homework, I hit on the idea of only using the sine ratio, Pythagoras’ result and the sine rule to solve these problems as it reduced the amount of things I needed to remember. I’ve used sine rule in the large triangle and then found the inclination of the road. This was a nostalgic exercise, and, as a result of not being able to find my Godfrey and Siddons or a scientific calculator to hand, I found myself using Wolfram Alpha to look up the trig ratios.

trig question solution 2

Steve Nicholson’s solution from daringfireball.net. This solution has gone for ‘projecting’ the pole shadow onto the horizontal and then solved the small triangle using sine rule.

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