Your summary isn’t quite right. There are no degrees (or angle measures) involved here. Instead, we have the lengths of the short side of various rectangles and

Your summary isn’t quite right. There are no degrees (or angle measures) involved here. Instead, we have the lengths of the short side of various rectangles and the lengths of the corresponding diagonals, along with (what the author’s claim is) the squared ratio between the diagonal and the long side of each rectangle – the squared secant – each of which happens to be a sexagesimally regular number with the rows organized in order based on this squared ratio (and which can conveniently also be interpreted as the squared ratio between the short side and the long side – the squared cotangent – by subtracting 1). The authors claim that such a table can be used (along with linear interpolation) as a very effective tool for solving trigonometry problems. I thought the paper was quite interesting and worth studying for anyone interested in number theory, metrical geometry, high school level math education, or mathematical history. I’ll agree that the press is a bit ridiculous though. Nobody is seriously suggesting that we should give up on computers and do all of our arithmetic in base sixty.