Mathematical table
![Facing pages from a 1619 book of mathematical tables by Matthias Bernegger, showing values for the sine, tangent and secant trigonometric functions. Angles less than 45° are found on the left page, angles greater than 45° on the right. Cosine, cotangent and cosecant are found by using the entry on the opposite page.](/Images/godic/202502/17/Bernegger_Manuale_1360915.jpg")
![](/Images/godic/202502/17/Bernegger_Manuale_1370915.jpg")
![A page from Henry Briggs' 1617 Logarithmorum Chilias Prima showing the base-10 (common) logarithm of the integers 0 to 67 to fourteen decimal places.](/Images/godic/202502/17/Logarithmorum_Chilias_Prima_page_0-670915.jpg")
![Part of a 20th-century table of common logarithms in the reference book Abramowitz and Stegun.](/Images/godic/202502/17/Abramowitz&Stegun.page97.agr0915.jpg")
Before calculators were cheap and plentiful, people would use mathematical tables —lists of numbers showing the results of calculation with varying arguments— to simplify and drastically speed up computation. Tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions were common in math and science textbooks. Specialized tables were published for applications such as astronomy, celestial navigation and statistics.