Sec, Cosec and Cot

Secant, cosecant and cotangent, almost always written as sec, cosec and cot are trigonometric functions like sin, cos and tan.

sec x  =    1 
              cos x

cosec x =    1     
               sin x
cot x =      1       =   cos x
              tan x         sin x

Note, sec x is not the same as cos^-1x (sometimes written as arccos x).

Remember, you cannot divide by zero and so these definitions are only valid when the denominators are not zero.

Example

If sec x = 2, cos x = ½, x = 60º

Graphs of sec x and cosec x

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© Matthew Pinkney 2007