How do you evaluate arccos(1) without a calculator?

1 Answer
Feb 18, 2017

Use a unit circle: arccos(1)=π

Explanation:

arccos(1) means: find me the angle that gives a cos(1).

You do need to realize that the arccos function has a restricted domain and range.

From the graph you can see that the restrictions are as follows:
Domain: [1,1] and Range: [0,π]
graph{arccos(x) [-5.074, 4.79, -0.76, 4.172]}

This means that the only angle that has a cos(1)=π