Well in Advanced Math this week I am really struggling. This is one of the hardest thing, to me, that we have learned all year. What i am talking about is 8-4. The only thing you are really doing is replacing trig functions with identities. There are guidelines to follow to do so:

1.Pythagorean identities (squared)
2.Move everything to sin and cosine or tangent if possible
3.Algebra to simplify
4.Identities
5.Algebra

You may have to repeat some of the steps in order to get the answer.

The identies are things such as sin²θ + cos²θ = 1
tan²θ + 1 = sec²θ
1 + cot ²θ = csc²θ

Ex: (sin²x-1)(cot²x+1)
*Make sure to turn everything into sine and cosine
=cos²x(cot²x+1) = (-cos²x)(csc²x) = cos²x(1/sin²x)=-cosx/sin²x= -cot²x = tan²x-cot²x

Most likely by looking at the example it makes no sense, but the key to this lesson is to know your identities and rules. The problems vary in many different ways also.