I played a quick, but fun and mathematically rich game in precalculus the other day that I thought I’d share. Let’s call it Rock, Paper, Triggers for now, (it’s kinda like Rock, Paper, Scissors but with Trig functions) but if you have a better name, let me know.

Each person secretly picks a trig function (SINE, COSINE or TANGENT) for themselves, and an angle to send to the other person. Then, once ready, both reveal and each person thinks about…
TheirFunctionOf(theAngleSentToThem)

Whoever’s value is higher wins.  No need for exact values, just figure out which one is bigger (and DNE automatically loses). So for example:

PERSON 1:
sin()
269°

PERSON 2:
cos()
190°

Person 1 has sin(190°) and person 2 has cos(269°). Well, both are negative, but 269° is so close to 270° that cos(269°) is a little less negative. So person 2 wins!

This was really good for number sense (no calculators), for thinking about what values of the different functions are possible, and where those values are on the unit circle.