- #1
Hells_Kitchen
- 62
- 0
A confusing trigonometric question!
Hi guys, I had a question. I was given the following equality. There was no problem statement that came with it (i.e. it did not say solve the equation or prove the identity, or anything of this nature)
sec x + csc x / tan x + cot x = sin x + cos x
The person that handed it to me said that he solved it whatever that means. Now, if this was an identity (i.e. true for all permissible values of x) than it should be true for say x=45 degrees. Clearly it is not!
Then I considered it as an equation (i.e. true for SOME permissible values of x). I studied the function f(x) = LHS - RHS and I saw that this function does not attain the value 0. So even as an equation, there is no solution.
Am I doing something wrong here, or is the other person doing something wrong?
Thanks guys!
Hi guys, I had a question. I was given the following equality. There was no problem statement that came with it (i.e. it did not say solve the equation or prove the identity, or anything of this nature)
sec x + csc x / tan x + cot x = sin x + cos x
The person that handed it to me said that he solved it whatever that means. Now, if this was an identity (i.e. true for all permissible values of x) than it should be true for say x=45 degrees. Clearly it is not!
Then I considered it as an equation (i.e. true for SOME permissible values of x). I studied the function f(x) = LHS - RHS and I saw that this function does not attain the value 0. So even as an equation, there is no solution.
Am I doing something wrong here, or is the other person doing something wrong?
Thanks guys!