Using Grapher

From Mac Guides

Grapher is a graphing application included in Mac OS X 10.4 and later, which can produce accurate graphs in 2 and 3 dimensions, however many functions are poorly documented. The table below shows some common functions, how to graph them and what the result looks like.

Grapher Functions

Many supplementary functions are available from the button on the right hand side of the equation box.

Function	Input	Notes
<math>\pi</math>	pi	This also works for most other greek letters. (pi also has shortcut option-P on Macs)
<math>\lambda</math>	lamda	Apple have spelled this Greek letter incorrectly
<math>\sqrt{x}</math>	sqrt(x)	Square root (shortcut option-V on Macs)
Conditions (piecewise function)	N/A	Create a piecewise function by choosing Condition from the popup menu next to the Equation field; it is used in example 3.

Examples

Function	Input	Graph Output
<math>y=\sin x</math>	y=sin(x)
<math>y=\sqrt{1+x^2}</math>	y=sqrt(1+x^2)
<math>y=\left\{\begin{array}{cl}x^2 & x>0 \\ x & -1<x<0 \\ -1 &x<-1 \end{array} \right.</math>