Formula without apparent conditional construct:

, that is useful e.g. to define the multivalued version of each inverse trigonometric function: e.g. . However, this might appear to conflict logically with the common semantics for expressions such as sin2(x) (although only sin2 x, without brackets, is the really common one) [...] Another convention used by a few authors is to use an uppercase first letter, along with a −1 superscript: Sin−1(x), Cos−1(x), Tan−1(x), etc. This potentially avoids confusion with the multiplicative inverse, which should be represented by sin−1(x), cos−1(x), etc., or, better, by sin−1 x, cos−1 x, etc.

Note that the expressions like sin−1(x) can still be useful to distinguish the multivalued inverse from the partial inverse: .