What are "tan" and "atan"? As the title says, I'm confused on what tan and atan are. I'm writing a program in Java and I came across these two mathematical functions. I know tan stands for tangent but if possible could someone please explain this to me. I have not taken triginomotry yet (I've taken up to Algebra 1) so I don't really need a very in depth explanation since i wouldnt understand but just a simple one so i could move on with my program would be great! Thanks in advanced. Also if possible could someone possibly give me a link to an image/example of a tangent and atan.  

atan stands for "arc tangent." It is the inverse function of tangent - this means it undoes the tangent function. So atan(tan(30)) = 30.
