tan

Tangent Function for Numeric and Symbolic Arguments

Depending on its arguments, tan returns floating-point or exact symbolic results.

Compute the tangent function for these numbers. Because these numbers are not symbolic objects, tan returns floating-point results.

A = tan([-2, -pi, pi/6, 5*pi/7, 11])

A =
    2.1850    0.0000    0.5774   -1.2540 -225.9508

Compute the tangent function for the numbers converted to symbolic objects. For many symbolic (exact) numbers, tan returns unresolved symbolic calls.

symA = tan(sym([-2, -pi, pi/6, 5*pi/7, 11]))

symA =
[ -tan(2), 0, 3^(1/2)/3, -tan((2*pi)/7), tan(11)]

Use vpa to approximate symbolic results with floating-point numbers:

vpa(symA)

ans =
[ 2.1850398632615189916433061023137,...
0,...
0.57735026918962576450914878050196,...
-1.2539603376627038375709109783365,...
-225.95084645419514202579548320345]

Plot Tangent Function

Plot the tangent function on the interval from $$-\pi$$ to $$\pi$$.

syms x
fplot(tan(x),[-pi pi])
grid on

Handle Expressions Containing Tangent Function

Many functions, such as diff, int, taylor, and rewrite, can handle expressions containing tan.

Find the first and second derivatives of the tangent function:

syms x
diff(tan(x), x)
diff(tan(x), x, x)

ans =
tan(x)^2 + 1
 
ans =
2*tan(x)*(tan(x)^2 + 1)

Find the indefinite integral of the tangent function:

int(tan(x), x)

ans =
-log(cos(x))

Find the Taylor series expansion of tan(x):

taylor(tan(x), x)

ans =
(2*x^5)/15 + x^3/3 + x

Rewrite the tangent function in terms of the sine and cosine functions:

rewrite(tan(x), 'sincos')

ans =
sin(x)/cos(x)

Rewrite the tangent function in terms of the exponential function:

rewrite(tan(x), 'exp')

ans =
-(exp(x*2i)*1i - 1i)/(exp(x*2i) + 1)

Evaluate Units with tan Function

tan numerically evaluates these units automatically: radian, degree, arcmin, arcsec, and revolution.

u = symunit;
syms x
f = [x*u.degree 2*u.radian];
tanf = tan(f)

tanf =
[ tan((pi*x)/180), tan(2)]