Sine and cosine

In mathematics, sine and cosine are trigonometric functions of an angle. The sine and cosine of
an acute angle are defined in the context of a right triangle: for the specified angle, its sine is the
ratio of the length of the side that is opposite that angle to the length of the longest side of the
triangle (the hypotenuse), and the cosine is the ratio of the length of the adjacent leg to that of
the hypotenuse. For an angle , the sine and cosine functions are denoted as and .[1]

The definitions of sine and cosine have been extended to any real value in terms of the lengths
of certain line segments in a unit circle. More modern definitions express the sine and cosine as
infinite series, or as the solutions of certain differential equations, allowing their extension to
arbitrary positive and negative values and even to complex numbers.

The sine and cosine functions are commonly used to model periodic phenomena such as sound
and light waves, the position and velocity of harmonic oscillators, sunlight intensity and day
length, and average temperature variations throughout the year. They can be traced to the jyā
and koṭi-jyā functions used in Indian astronomy during the Gupta period.

Notation
Sine and cosine are written using functional notation with the abbreviations sin and cos.

Often, if the argument is simple enough, the function value will be written without parentheses,
as sin θ rather than as sin(θ).
Each of sine and cosine is a function of an
angle, which is usually expressed in terms of
radians or degrees. Except where explicitly
Sine and cosine
stated otherwise, this article assumes that the
angle is measured in radians.

Definitions
General information

General
Right-angled definition
triangle
definitions

Fields of Trigonom
application
Fourier
series, e

For the angle α, the sine function

gives the ratio of the length of the
opposite side to the length of the
hypotenuse.

To define the sine and cosine of an acute angle α, start with a right triangle that contains an
angle of measure α; in the accompanying figure, angle α in triangle ABC is the angle of interest.
The three sides of the triangle are named as follows:
 The opposite side is the side opposite to
the angle of interest, in this case side a.

The hypotenuse is the side opposite the

right angle, in this case side h. The
hypotenuse is always the longest side of
a right-angled triangle.

The adjacent side is the remaining side,

in this case side b. It forms a side of
(and is adjacent to) both the angle of
interest (angle A) and the right angle.
Once such a triangle is chosen, the sine of the angle is equal to the length of the opposite side,
divided by the length of the hypotenuse:[2]

The other trigonometric functions of the angle can be defined similarly; for example, the tangent
is the ratio between the opposite and adjacent sides.[2]

As stated, the values and appear to depend on the choice of right triangle
containing an angle of measure α. However, this is not the case: all such triangles are similar,
and so the ratios are the same for each of them.

Unit circle definitions

In trigonometry, a unit circle is the circle of radius one centered at the origin (0, 0) in the
Cartesian coordinate system.

Unit circle: a circle with radius one

Let a line through the origin intersect the unit circle, making an angle of θ with the positive half
of the x-axis. The x- and y-coordinates of this point of intersection are equal to cos(θ) and sin(θ),
respectively. This definition is consistent with the right-angled triangle definition of sine and

cosine when : because the length of the hypotenuse of the unit circle is always 1,

. The length of the opposite side of the

triangle is simply the y-coordinate. A similar argument can be made for the cosine function to

show that when , even under the new definition using the

unit circle. tan(θ) is then defined as , or, equivalently, as the slope of the line segment.

Using the unit circle definition has the advantage that the angle can be extended to any real
argument. This can also be achieved by requiring certain symmetries, and that sine be a periodic
function.
Complex exponential function
definitions
The exponential function is defined on the entire domain of the complex numbers. The
definition of sine and cosine can be extended to all complex numbers via

These can be reversed to give Euler's formula

When plotted on the complex plane, the function for real values of traces out the unit circle
in the complex plane.

When is a real number, sine and cosine simplify to the imaginary and real parts of or ,
as:
When for real values and , sine and cosine can be expressed in terms of real
sines, cosines, and hyperbolic functions as

Differential equation definition

is the solution to the two-dimensional system of differential
equations and with the initial conditions and
. One could interpret the unit circle in the above definitions as defining the phase
space trajectory of the differential equation with the given initial conditions.
 Animation demonstrating how the sine
function (in red) is graphed from the y-
coordinate (red dot) of a point on the unit
circle (in green), at an angle of θ. The cosine
(in blue) is the x-coordinate.

It can be interpreted as a phase space trajectory of the system of differential equations

and starting from the initial conditions and
.
Series definitions

The sine function (blue) is closely

approximated by its Taylor polynomial
of degree 7 (pink) for a full cycle
centered on the origin.

This animation shows how including

more and more terms in the partial
sum of its Taylor series approaches a
sine curve.

The successive derivatives of sine, evaluated at zero, can be used to determine its Taylor series.
Using only geometry and properties of limits, it can be shown that the derivative of sine is
cosine, and that the derivative of cosine is the negative of sine. This means the successive
derivatives of sin(x) are cos(x), -sin(x), -cos(x), sin(x), continuing to repeat those four functions.
The (4n+k)-th derivative, evaluated at the point 0:
where the superscript represents repeated differentiation. This implies the following Taylor
series expansion at x = 0. One can then use the theory of Taylor series to show that the following
identities hold for all real numbers x (where x is the angle in radians):[3]

Taking the derivative of each term gives the Taylor series for cosine:
Continued fraction definitions
The sine function can also be represented as a generalized continued fraction:
The continued fraction representations can be derived from Euler's continued fraction formula
and express the real number values, both rational and irrational, of the sine and cosine functions.

Identities
Exact identities (using radians):

These apply for all values of .

Reciprocals
The reciprocal of sine is cosecant, i.e., the reciprocal of is . Cosecant gives the ratio
of the length of the hypotenuse to the length of the opposite side. Similarly, the reciprocal of
cosine is secant, which gives the ratio of the length of the hypotenuse to that of the adjacent
side.
Inverses

The usual principal values of

the arcsin(x) and arccos(x)
functions graphed on the
Cartesian plane

The inverse function of sine is arcsine (arcsin or asin) or inverse sine (sin−1). The inverse
function of cosine is arccosine (arccos, acos, or cos−1). (The superscript of −1 in sin−1 and cos−1
denotes the inverse of a function, not exponentiation.) As sine and cosine are not injective, their
inverses are not exact inverse functions, but partial inverse functions. For example, sin(0) = 0,
but also sin(π) = 0, sin(2π) = 0 etc. It follows that the arcsine function is multivalued:
arcsin(0) = 0, but also arcsin(0) = π, arcsin(0) = 2π, etc. When only one value is desired, the
function may be restricted to its principal branch. With this restriction, for each x in the domain,
the expression arcsin(x) will evaluate only to a single value, called its principal value. The
standard range of principal values for arcsin is from −π/2 to π/2 and the standard range for
arccos is from 0 to π.
where (for some integer k):

By definition, arcsin and arccos satisfy the equations:

and

Pythagorean trigonometric identity

The basic relationship between the sine and the cosine is the Pythagorean trigonometric
identity:[1]

where sin2(x) means (sin(x))2.

Double angle formulas
Sine and cosine satisfy the following double angle formulas:

Sine function in blue and sine squared

function in red. The X axis is in
radians.

The cosine double angle formula implies that sin2 and cos2 are, themselves, shifted and scaled
sine waves. Specifically,[4]

The graph shows both the sine function and the sine squared function, with the sine in blue and
sine squared in red. Both graphs have the same shape, but with different ranges of values, and
different periods. Sine squared has only positive values, but twice the number of periods.
Derivative and integrals
The derivatives of sine and cosine are:

and their antiderivatives are:

where C denotes the constant of integration.[1]

Properties relating to the
quadrants

The four quadrants of a Cartesian

coordinate system

The table below displays many of the key properties of the sine function (sign, monotonicity,
convexity), arranged by the quadrant of the argument. For arguments outside those in the table,
one may compute the corresponding information by using the periodicity
of the sine function.

Angle Sine Cosine

Quadrant
Degrees Radians Sign Monotony Convexity Sign Monotony Convexity

1st
increasing concave decreasing concave
quadrant, I

2nd
decreasing concave decreasing convex
quadrant, II

3rd
decreasing convex increasing convex
quadrant, III

4th
increasing convex increasing concave
quadrant, IV
 The quadrants of the unit circle and of sin(x), using the Cartesian
coordinate system

The following table gives basic information at the boundary of the quadrants.

Degrees Radians
Value Point type Value Point type

Root, inflection Maximum

Maximum Root, inflection

Root, inflection Minimum

Minimum Root, inflection

Fixed points

The fixed point iteration xn+1 = cos(xn)

with initial value x0 = −1 converges to
the Dottie number.
Zero is the only real fixed point of the sine function; in other words the only intersection of the
sine function and the identity function is . The only real fixed point of the cosine
function is called the Dottie number. That is, the Dottie number is the unique real root of the
equation The decimal expansion of the Dottie number is .[5]

Arc length
The arc length of the sine curve between and is

where is the incomplete elliptic integral of the second kind with modulus . It cannot be
expressed using elementary functions.

The arc length for a full period is[6]

where is the gamma function and is the lemniscate constant.[6][7]

Laws
The law of sines states that for an arbitrary triangle with sides a, b, and c and angles opposite
those sides A, B and C:
This is equivalent to the equality of the first three expressions below:

where R is the triangle's circumradius.

It can be proved by dividing the triangle into two right ones and using the above definition of
sine. The law of sines is useful for computing the lengths of the unknown sides in a triangle if
two angles and one side are known. This is a common situation occurring in triangulation, a
technique to determine unknown distances by measuring two angles and an accessible
enclosed distance.

The law of cosines states that for an arbitrary triangle with sides a, b, and c and angles opposite
those sides A, B and C:

In the case where , and this becomes the Pythagorean theorem: for a

right triangle, where c is the hypotenuse.

Special values

Some common angles (θ) shown on the unit circle. The

angles are given in degrees and radians, together with the
corresponding intersection point on the unit circle, (cos(θ),
sin(θ)).

For integer multiples of 15° (that is, radians), the values of sin(x) and cos(x) are particularly

simple and can be expressed in terms of only. A table of these angles is given
below. For more complex angle expressions see Exact trigonometric values § Common angles.
 Angle, x sin(x) cos(x)

Degrees Radians Gradians Turns Exact Decimal Exact Decimal

0° 0 0g 0 0 0 1 1

1 2 1
15° 12
π 16 3 g 24 0.2588 0.9659

1 1 1 1
30° 6
π 33 3 g 12 2 0.5 0.8660

1 1
45° 4
π 50g 8 0.7071 0.7071

1 2 1 1
60° 3
π 66 3 g 6 0.8660 2 0.5

5 1 5
75° 12
π 83 3 g 24 0.9659 0.2588

1 1
90° 2
π 100g 4 1 1 0 0

90 degree increments:

x in degrees 0° 90° 180° 270° 360°

x in radians 0 π/2 π 3π/2 2π

x in gons 0 100g 200g 300g 400g

x in turns 0 1/4 1/2 3/4 1

sin x 0 1 0 −1 0

cos x 1 0 −1 0 1
Relationship to complex
numbers

and are the real and

imaginary parts of .

Sine and cosine are used to connect the real and imaginary parts of a complex number with its
polar coordinates (r, φ):

The real and imaginary parts are:

where r and φ represent the magnitude and angle of the complex number z.

For any real number θ, Euler's formula says that:

Therefore, if the polar coordinates of z are (r, φ),

Complex arguments

Domain coloring of sin(z) in the

complex plane. Brightness indicates
absolute magnitude, hue represents
complex argument.

sin(z) as a vector field

Applying the series definition of the sine and cosine to a complex argument, z, gives:
where sinh and cosh are the hyperbolic sine and cosine. These are entire functions.

It is also sometimes useful to express the complex sine and cosine functions in terms of the real
and imaginary parts of its argument:
Partial fraction and product expansions of
complex sine
Using the partial fraction expansion technique in complex analysis, one can find that the infinite
series

both converge and are equal to . Similarly, one can show that

Using product expansion technique, one can derive

Alternatively, the infinite product for the sine can be proved using complex Fourier series.
 Proof of the infinite
product for the sine

Using complex Fourier series, the function can be decomposed as

Setting yields

Therefore, we get

The function is the derivative of . Furthermore, if

, then the function such that the emerged series converges on some open

and connected subset of is , which can be proved using

the Weierstrass M-test. The interchange of the sum and derivative is justified by uniform
convergence. It follows that
 Exponentiating gives

Since and , we have .

Hence

for some open and connected subset of . Let . Since

converges uniformly on any closed disk, converges uniformly on any

[8]
closed disk as well. It follows that the infinite product is holomorphic on . By the
identity theorem, the infinite product for the sine is valid for all , which completes
the proof.

Usage of complex sine

sin(z) is found in the functional equation for the Gamma function,
which in turn is found in the functional equation for the Riemann zeta-function,

As a holomorphic function, sin z is a 2D solution of Laplace's equation:

The complex sine function is also related to the level curves of pendulums.[9]

Complex graphs

Sine function in the complex plane

real imaginary
magnitude
component component
Arcsine function in the complex plane

real imaginary
magnitude
component component

History

Quadrant from 1840s Ottoman Turkey

with axes for looking up the sine and
versine of angles

While the early study of trigonometry can be traced to antiquity, the trigonometric functions as
they are in use today were developed in the medieval period. The chord function was discovered
by Hipparchus of Nicaea (180–125 BCE) and Ptolemy of Roman Egypt (90–165 CE).[10]

The sine and cosine functions can be traced to the jyā and koṭi-jyā functions used in Indian
astronomy during the Gupta period (Aryabhatiya and Surya Siddhanta), via translation from