What's the key to remembering how to draw each of the different trigonometric function graphs? (i.e. sin, cos, tan)
Need a good way to remember how to quickly draw the graphs for the common trig functions.
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SOH – sin
CAH – cos
TOA – tan
sin = opposite over hypotenuse
cos = adjacent over hypotenuse
tan = opposite over adjacent
Sin is a backwards S, turned sideways, starting at the origin.
Cosine is sin shifted to the left by pi/2,
Tangent, not sounding similar to either of the other two, bares no resemblence to the other two. It’s the “weird one”, that starts at (0,0) and goes exponentially to infinity at X=pi/2, and then on the other side of X=pi/2, comes from negative infinity and decreases exponentially to 0 at X=pi.
http://www.mathsrevision.net/gcse/pages.php?page=39
Remembering a unit circle always helps me.
The coordinates are (cos,sin) so at 0 degrees with respect to the horizontal it would be (1,0) so cos(0)=1 and sin(0)=0 Now you know that cos is the one that starts at 1, and sine is the one that starts at 0.
SOHCAHTOA always worked for me.
Umm… I don’t know. I took trig ten years ago. It’s the only math I ever passed easily, and the only thing I remember having to memorize was SOHCAHTOA.
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