Original
Trigonometric functions arise frequently in problems, and often we are
interested in finding specific angle measures. For instance, you may
want to find some angle {{MATH_75}} such that
{{MATH_76}}
Hence we want to be able to ``undo'' trigonometric functions. However, since
trigonometric functions are not one-to-one, meaning there are are
infinitely many angles with {{MATH_77}}, it is impossible to
find a true inverse function for {{MATH_78}}. Nevertheless, it is
useful to have something like an inverse to these functions, however
imperfect. The usual approach is to pick out some collection of angles
that produce all possible values exactly once. If we ``discard'' all
other angles, the resulting function has a proper inverse. In other
words, we are restricting the domain of the trigonometric function in
order to find an inverse. The function {{MATH_79}} takes on all
values between {{MATH_80}} and {{MATH_81}} exactly once on the interval {{MATH_82}}.