Precal Blog

Today we started off class by reviewing what we learned yesterday (see annmarie’s post). Then an example was put on the board and we were supposed to draw the cosecant graph.Graphing cosecant really isn’t all that hard. First you start off by drawing the sine graph. Then we take what we learned yesterday and apply it now. The high and low points of the sine graph are shared by the cosecant graph. And we know that all the values at zero are undefined so there are vertical asymptotes at all the zero spots. The cosecant graph is now finished after you drow in the red as seen on the graph.

We then followed the first example problem with another csc problem. And followed the same steps.This example was followed by another example. It was just the “normal” secant theta graph which is still worked through the exact same way. 

The last example was a Secant graph instead of a cosecant graph, but you follow the same steps. So tomorrow we will most likely start class with this example since we left off with it.So the main things you need to know in order to graph secant and cosecant are:

-all mid-line points create an asymptote

-cosecant is undefined when sine theta = 0

 -When the value of sine is really small, the value of cosecant is really big

-sine is really small near asymptote

This is what 3rd hour honors precalc did on 11-17-09. The next scribe is Patrick.