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Basis of trigonometry: if two right triangles have equal acute angles, they are similar, so their corresponding side lengths are proportional.. In mathematics, the trigonometric functions (also called circular functions, angle functions or goniometric functions) [1] are real functions which relate an angle of a right-angled triangle to ratios of two side lengths.
For a function on the real numbers or on the integers, that means that the entire graph can be formed from copies of one particular portion, repeated at regular intervals. A simple example of a periodic function is the function that gives the "fractional part" of its argument. Its period is 1. In particular,
Explicitly, they are defined below as functions of the known angle A, where a, b and h refer to the lengths of the sides in the accompanying figure. In the following definitions, the hypotenuse is the side opposite to the 90-degree angle in a right triangle; it is the longest side of the triangle and one of the two sides adjacent to angle A.
A formula for computing the trigonometric identities for the one-third angle exists, but it requires finding the zeroes of the cubic equation 4x 3 − 3x + d = 0, where is the value of the cosine function at the one-third angle and d is the known value of the cosine function at the full angle.
Similar right triangles illustrating the tangent and secant trigonometric functions Trigonometric functions and their reciprocals on the unit circle. The Pythagorean theorem applied to the blue triangle shows the identity 1 + cot 2 θ = csc 2 θ, and applied to the red triangle shows that 1 + tan 2 θ = sec 2 θ.
The six trigonometric functions are defined for every real number, except, for some of them, for angles that differ from 0 by a multiple of the right angle (90°). Referring to the diagram at the right, the six trigonometric functions of θ are, for angles smaller than the right angle:
The two solutions to this equation are (−1, 0) and (cos φ, sin φ). This allows us to write the latter as rational functions of t (solutions are given below). The parameter t represents the stereographic projection of the point (cos φ, sin φ) onto the y-axis with the center of projection at (−1, 0).
A straight line can intersect a circle at zero, one, or two points. A line with intersections at two points is called a secant line, at one point a tangent line and at no points an exterior line. A chord is the line segment that joins two distinct points of a circle. A chord is therefore contained in a unique secant line and each secant line ...