secant
Sign in to saveAlso known as sec, secant function, sec function
ratio of the hypotenuse of a triangle to the adjacent side of an angle
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- meromorphic function
- Part of
- secant and cosecant
- Image
- Secant.svg
Show 4 more facts
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
- Commons category
- Secant function
- TeX string
- \sec
- mathematical inverse
- cosine
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Basis of trigonometry: if two right triangles have equal acute angles, they are similar, so their corresponding side lengths are proportional. In mathematics, the trigonometric functions (also called circular functions, angle functions or goniometric functions) are real functions which relate an angle of a right-angled triangle to ratios of two side lengths. They are widely used in all sciences that are related to geometry, such as navigation, solid mechanics, celestial mechanics, geodesy, and many others. They are among the simplest periodic functions, and are widely used for studying periodic phenomena through Fourier analysis.
The trigonometric functions most commonly used in modern mathematics are the sine, the cosine, and the tangent functions. Their reciprocals are respectively the cosecant, the secant, and the cotangent functions, which are less commonly used. Each of these six trigonometric functions has a corresponding inverse function and has an analog among the hyperbolic functions.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “secant” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.