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Thursday, April 17, 2014

BQ#5 – Unit T Concepts 1-3

Why do sine and cosine NOT have asymptotes, but the other four trig graphs do? Use unit circle ratios to explain.
Sine and cosine do not have asymptotes because their ratios are y/r and x/r, meaning that the radius will ALWAYS be the denominator. You will never have a 0 as your denominator. Because of this, we will never encounter an undefined answer, meaning we will not encounter any asymptotes (since asymptotes = undefined, basically).
However, that is a different case for cosecant, secant, cotangent, and tangent. Cosecant has a ratio of r/y. The "y" value can be 0 in certain cases: if we are at (1,0) or (-1,0). Same for secant; secant has a ratio of r/x and x can be 0 in some cases: (0,1) and (0, -1). Cotangent and tangent have the ratios of x/y and y/x so, again, of course you will have some y values and x values that equal to 0.
Also, a good thing to nice is that cotangent and and cosecant have the same denominator in their ratios: y. Therefore, they will have the same asymptotes. Tangent and secant will have the same asymptotes as well because their denominators in their ratios are x.

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