And what is the independent variable? In other words, to find the inverse function, what should we solve for? r?

?
If the problem is to solve

for

, this is relatively straight forward. Multiply both sides by the denominator:

.
Take the

power of both sides:
Multiply both sides by

:
Subtract N from both sides:
Divide both sides by

:
Subtract

from both sides:
Finally, divide both sides by -2R:

and take the arccosine of both sides:
:
If you want to solve for r, having both

and

makes it much harder.