• Best of luck to the class of 2024 for their HSC exams. You got this!
    Let us know your thoughts on the HSC exams here
  • YOU can help the next generation of students in the community!
    Share your trial papers and notes on our Notes & Resources page
MedVision ad

Graphs (1 Viewer)

Joined
Dec 20, 2008
Messages
207
Gender
Male
HSC
2010

Say you were given a graph like cosecx and they tell you to draw 1/f(x), will there be open circles the intercepts or not?

eg. They give you some parabola looking thing like cosecx called f(x) with asymptotes, will there be open circles for intercepts for 1/f(x) or none like sinx?
 

Trebla

Administrator
Administrator
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
Messages
8,384
Gender
Male
HSC
2006
There will be open circles as the graph is undefined at those points.
 

lychnobity

Active Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2008
Messages
1,292
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
2009
It's not really undefined :|, its 1/infinite which should be zero but technically you can't reach it. I dunno.

1/(cscx) - Wolfram|Alpha

1/cosecx gives sinx without any opened dots so ?_?...
Listen to Trebla.

1/infinity does not equal zero. It comes CLOSE TO IT; but never reaches it. That's why the 'intercepts' should have open circles, as it is defined at every point before and after it, except for the actual intercept.
 

Rezen

Member
Joined
Mar 12, 2009
Messages
62
Gender
Male
HSC
2010
But in this case, 1/f(x) is cosx which is defined for for all x. If however you where to do f(x)=lnx, then there would be an open circle at x=0.

Atleast this is my understanding of what your ment to graph?
 

Trebla

Administrator
Administrator
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
Messages
8,384
Gender
Male
HSC
2006
It's not really undefined :|, its 1/infinite which should be zero but technically you can't reach it. I dunno.

1/(cscx) - Wolfram|Alpha

1/cosecx gives sinx without any opened dots so ?_?...
This is where one needs some strict technical precision:
cosec x = 1/sin x ONLY wherever sin x is non-zero
So technically one should write

DEFINITION:
cosec x = 1/sin x (with restriction sin x =/= 0)
By rearrangement
sin x = 1/cosec x (with restriction sin x =/= 0)
The restriction doesn't go away

What I'm basically trying to say is that sin x = 1/cosec x only if sin x is non-zero because of the restriction applied on cosec x which isn't automatically removed just for the sake of it.

You can only do this:
1/cosec x = 1/(1/sin x) = sin x
when sin x is non-zero due to the denominator in the definition of cosec x
 

cutemouse

Account Closed
Joined
Apr 23, 2007
Messages
2,250
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
N/A
Well by definition, the cosec function has gaps in its domain (namely when sinx=0).

So if f(x)=cosecx then sketching y=1/f(x) will mean that there would indeed be open circles at the x-intercepts as they are not included in the domain.

Also talking about whether the cosec function is defined at the points where sinx=0 doesn't make any sense because they are not included in the domain of the cosec function.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)

Top