First let's learn where the Pythagorean identities came from, namely the Pythagorean theorem:By the Pythagorean theorem: Divide through by That's the first Pythagorean identity: ------------------------------------- Divide through by That's the second Pythagorean identity: ------------------------------------- Divide through by That's the third Pythagorean identity: ------------------------------------- Be sure to memorize all three of them. Usually we write them this way, so they're easier to learn: -------------------------------------- Those identities are true for ALL angles So for Since the third Pythagorean identity is true for ALL angles , let , then So we can replace by So your problem: becomes: then the "cotangent squared"s cancel: and that just leaves 1, which is an integer. Edwin