at the beginning of calculus and i got everything except for trig stuff.
Never liked trig.

if sin(t)=1/6 and t is between 0 and pi/2, what is tan(t)? Give an exact answer and justify it

e/ i guess this is more trig, sorry for bad title.

This post was edited by Barcelona1011 on Jan 27 2014 09:51pm

Calculus is a lot of trig, I believe. So the title is fine

Besides that, I can't help you. Only in pre-calc haha

:\ oh well. Not due til Wednesday but definitely would like some help. I have done problems like this before but I can't remember how to do it.

Remember this mnemonic:
Some
Old
Hippie
Caught
Another
Hippie
Trippin'
On
Acid

you know sin(t) = opposite / hypotenuese and cos(t) = adjascent / hypotenuese, and tan(t) = sin(t)/cos(t) = oppose / adjacent

to determine adjascent, you can draw a right triangle and use pythagorea's theorem. your opposite is 1 and hypotenuse is 6 (given in problem), which are two sides of your triangle.

only question left is whether tan is positive or negative. and that's where the unit circle comes in since you know the angle. based on the quadrant, you can determine whether cos is positive or negative, which in turn determines the sign of tan since tan = sin/cos


it's a trig question, not calc. calculus involves a lot of algebra and arithmetic too. that doesn't mean "what is 1+1?" counts as calculus.

This post was edited by carteblanche on Jan 28 2014 12:00am

Thanks dude. Helps a lot. Gonna help with a lot of other trig things. I knew to use the unit circle for my sign but that was about it.
Thanks again.

e/ Doh I always used "SohCahToa"
Can't believe I didn't think to use that. I like yours more btw xD

This post was edited by Barcelona1011 on Jan 28 2014 12:02am

i have problems pronouncing things. one time in my high school class i was trying to remember if it was pronounced "So-kuh-toe-uh" (SohCahToa) or "sack-oh-toe-uh" (SahCohToa). ughhh. never again.

On a similar note, some trig functions cannot evaluate to an answer, eg tan does not exist if cos(x) = 0 since tan = sin/cos. my teacher was lazy and wrote on the board "DNE" instead of "does not exist". later on the exam, a student answered it as 1 and pointed to her notes "ONE".

moral of story: understand the meaning and pick something you can memorize, not what someone else can.

This post was edited by carteblanche on Jan 28 2014 12:13am