Here’s a straightforward application of arccosine, that, as far as I can tell, isn’t taught too often in Precalculus and is not part of the Common Core standards for vectors and matrices.
Find the angle between the vectors and .
This problem is equivalent to finding the angle between the lines and . The angle is not drawn in standard position, which makes measurement of the angle initial daunting.
Fortunately, there is the straightforward formula for the angle between two vectors and :
We recall that is the dot product (or inner product) of the two vectors and , while is the norm (or length) of the vector .
For this particular example,
In the next post, we’ll discuss why this actually works. And then we’ll consider how the same problem can be solved more directly using arctangent.
I'm a Professor of Mathematics and a University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of North Texas. For eight years, I was co-director of Teach North Texas, UNT's program for preparing secondary teachers of mathematics and science.
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This problem is equivalent to finding the angle between the lines 
