Monday, February 21, 2011

No, Secant!

So about yesterday's comic ...

Okay, I could tell you that the gray U-shaped figures are part of the punchline, although that isn't very clear in the presentation.

And I could say that those gray shapes are actually negative secant and are a part of a different equation in the same system being graphed together, which would explain why they are colored differently.

Or I could just tell you that I screwed up a comic which bears some but not much resemblance to what I'd originally pictured in my head. I oversimplified the concept to the point were there was just a U-shape in the center of an empty field. It didn't scream "secant" to me, so I new it needed something. So I added the asymptotes, but it still looked empty, so I added two more on either side and finally added the -pi/2 and pi/2.

I even double-checked a graph to make sure that it was supposed to be pi/2. I didn't notice that the rest of my "graph" was incorrect. Oopsie.

Nice to know that I have a few readers out there who will comment, even if it's to point out my mistakes. Moral of the story: when you're tired, take the day off.

A corrected version for those who didn't buy my explanation yesterday:

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