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the third side of a triangle if two sides and an angle opposite to one of them is known (this side can also be found by two applications of the law of sines): [a] = . These formulas produce high round-off errors in floating point calculations if the triangle is very acute, i.e., if c is small relative to a and b or γ is small compared to 1.
To find an unknown angle, the law of cosines is safer than the law of sines. The reason is that the value of sine for the angle of the triangle does not uniquely determine this angle. For example, if sin β = 0.5, the angle β can equal either 30° or 150°. Using the law of cosines avoids this problem: within the interval from 0° to 180° the ...
Case 5: two angles and an opposite side given (AAS). The sine rule gives b and then we have Case 7 (rotated). There are either one or two solutions. Case 6: three angles given (AAA). The supplemental cosine rule may be used to give the sides a, b, and c but, to avoid ambiguities, the half-side formulae are preferred.
If the law of cosines is used to solve for c, the necessity of inverting the cosine magnifies rounding errors when c is small. In this case, the alternative formulation of the law of haversines is preferable. [3] A variation on the law of cosines, the second spherical law of cosines, [4] (also called the cosine rule for angles [1]) states:
With these functions, one can answer virtually all questions about arbitrary triangles by using the law of sines and the law of cosines. [33] These laws can be used to compute the remaining angles and sides of any triangle as soon as two sides and their included angle or two angles and a side or three sides are known.
The proofs given in this article use these definitions, and thus apply to non-negative angles not greater than a right angle. For greater and negative angles , see Trigonometric functions . Other definitions, and therefore other proofs are based on the Taylor series of sine and cosine , or on the differential equation f ″ + f = 0 ...
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In a scalene triangle, the trigonometric functions can be used to find the unknown measure of either a side or an internal angle; methods for doing so use the law of sines and the law of cosines. [37] Any three angles that add to 180° can be the internal angles of a triangle.