what does cot equal

The cotangent, commonly abbreviated as cot, is a trigonometric function that relates the ratio of the adjacent and opposite sides of a right triangle. In a right triangle, the cotangent of an angle is the length of the adjacent side divided by the length of the opposite side. The cotangent of an angle A can be expressed as cot A = cos A / sin A. The reciprocal of the cotangent is the tangent: 1/cot A = tan A. In calculus, the derivative of cot(x) is -csc^2(x) .