What is the purpose, if any, of secant, cosecant, and cotangent? I’m an engineering student so I use sine, cosine, and tangent a lot, but almost never the other 3. Creating a new trig function just to be the reciprocal seems to be a bit redundant.

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What is the purpose, if any, of secant, cosecant, and cotangent? I’m an engineering student so I use sine, cosine, and tangent a lot, but almost never the other 3. Creating a new trig function just to be the reciprocal seems to be a bit redundant.

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In engineering, these functions are used to solve design and construction problems. For example, in the construction of bridges and tall buildings, these functions are used to calculate the lengths of cables required to support the weight of the structure. They are also used in electrical engineering to calculate the impedance of electrical circuits.

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