What is the difference between sinx and sin 1(x)

They are two totally different functions with different domains and ranges and different definitions. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 3 years, 2 months ago.

Active 3 years, 1 month ago. Viewed times. No, not at all. I don't think convention is a sufficient reason for preserving inconsistent notation. Show 3 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. The notation is confusing and it takes a while for students to master the concepts. Add a comment. Deepesh Meena Deepesh Meena 4, 2 2 gold badges 13 13 silver badges 25 25 bronze badges. It is vitally important to keep in mind that the inverse sine function is a single-valued, one-to-one function.

Only one of the infinite number of solutions given above is the result we want. Which one? Remember that the range of sin -1 x is , which is indicated in blue in the figure above. It is really important to know the domain and range of the inverse trigonometric functions! Why is this blue interval marked on the x-axis if it represents the range of sin -1 x? Because the range of the inverse function equals the domain of the principal function. A unit-circle diagram is shown at right.

Notice that candidates for the solution include:. However, only one of these values is in the range of sin -1 x , so:.