the reason trig is taught in precalculus is, that to explain the theory, you need a lot of basic info to explain the theory but, any idiot can "solve" trig problems just knowing that sine is opposite over hypotenuse Cosine is adjacent over hypotenuse tangent is opposite over adjacent. but the thing is, most people don't actually explain WHY and most people don't understand why and most teachers don't understand why they have to understand why.
wait a minute, you're telling me you would rather understand why something actually works than be compleatly ignorant to whats actually going on.....i'm sorry but the world dosen't need people who deviate away from second hand belief.
math should be more about thinking skills, not actually knowing math. somehow the art of logical thinking was forgotten along the way...
and the world doesn't need snide comments. But trig is not that simple relationship wise...its for the most part an imperical relationship until calculus become advanced enough. You don't start to learn wave functions until a few years after learning right angle trigonomitry and to someone who says they don't need maths..i say to you that 100% of what you can understand is done using maths in a subjective manner so it might cloud the generalized nature of your thoughts