Real world uses of hyperbolic trigonometric functions I covered hyperbolic trigonometric functions in a recent maths course. However I was never presented with any reasons as to why (or even if) they are useful.
Is there any good examples of their uses outside academia?

I don't know if you consider General Relativity "outside acadamia"(and I don't care to argue the point!) but if you do,
the group of symmetries with respect to the Lorentzian Metric can be written as Matrices containing hyperbolic trig functions as elements.
Note Kenny's comment.
