It’s homework help, but I’m not asking for the solution. The problem only asks for cos, sin, tan, cot, csc given sec. I found those pretty quickly on my own, and confirmed solutions with the back of the book.

Where I run into confusion is when I try to find angle theta on my own. Arccos of found cos gives 2.06, arcsin of found sin gives 1.08, and arctan of found tan gives -1.08. Problem givens exclude possibility of the negative angle found by arctan(-15/8), but the other two are possible and conflicting. And why wouldn’t they all be the same? I reattempted because there were so many erase marks from trying to figure this out that it was almost illegible.

Am I wrong? Did the book give me a point not on the unit circle or something, assuming I wouldn’t try to find theta on my own? Have I used arcfuncs wrong- I checked the domains against the function definitions? Have I found a hole in math?

  • DarkNightoftheSoulOPEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    Okay thanks. One more question: Unless quadrant is known beforehand (as in this case it was given), is there any way to tell which inverse function is “correct?”

    Edit2: Oh, of course- you already said and I already read but forgot: It’s based on cos and sine, whether they’re negative.