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On the construction of the elementary trigonometric functions

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Pure Mathematics and Applications
Special issue dedicated to 70th anniversary of prof. Peter Tallos

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The article discusses the construction of the elementary trigonometric functions. It discusses several approaches, but the main message is that to construct the trigonometric functions one needs to follow the same approach as one should use during the construction of the real exponential function, but one should use complex numbers. The key point is that one must construct the complex square root function to define the trigonometric functions on the binary numbers and then one should use some convexity argument to prove their differentiability. This approach, as the power series approach, based on the intimate relation between the trigonometric and the exponential functions.