Section 6.6
Graphing Inverses of Trigonometric Functions
By: Mitchell P.
Mrs. B-Well's 5th period ICM class
March fourth, two thousand three
This is a little story about a young chipmunk named Fredrick. Fredrick lived a happy chipmunk life. His favorite TV show was "Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers." His biggest goal in life was to become one of the Rescue Rangers. Fredrick had a unique talent. Fredrick was a math genius. One day Fredrick was walking through the city park and saw that the Rangers were coming to his hometown! This was his chance, he had to figure out a way to impress the Rescue Rangers. When the Rangers came to town, Freddy went to see them and he managed to get to talk to them for a while. Freddy asked them how he might go about becoming a Rescue Ranger. When Chip, the leader of the Rangers, asked Freddy if he had any special talents, Freddy told him about his unique ability to solve any math problem. Freddy said, "For example, do you know how to graph the inverses of trigonometric functions?" Chip was immediately impressed and said, "Graph the inverse of this equation and you can be an official member of Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers!" The equation was:
y = Cos x
"Well that's easy...the inverse of the Cosine of x is the Arc cosine of x, also know as cosŻą(x). The graph looks like this...Duh!" said Freddy.
"Well then kudos to you my friend," said Chip, "welcome to the Rescue Rangers."
"Its quite simple actually, you just invert the graph 90°, keeping the graph positive and add either an Arc to cos or put a (-1) superscript." answered Freddy
"I have no idea what your talkin' about, but regardless...you're in." replied Chip.
For additional information, see: http://www.math.com/tables/algebra/functions/trig/overview.htm
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-Groucho Marx