Background: I'm writing some geometry software in Java. I need the precision offered by Java's BigDecimal class. Since BigDecimal doesn't have support for trig functions, I thought I'd take a look at how Java implements the standard Math library methods and write my own version with BigDecimal support.
Reading this JavaDoc, I learned that Java uses algorithms "from the well-known network library netlib as the package "Freely Distributable Math Library," fdlibm. These algorithms, which are written in the C programming language, are then to be understood as executed with all floating-point operations following the rules of Java floating-point arithmetic."
My Question: I looked up fblibm's sin function, k_sin.c, and it looks like they use a Taylor series of order 13 to approximate sine (edit - njuffa commented that fdlibm uses a minimax polynomial approximation). The code defines the coefficients of the polynomial as S1 through S6. I decided to check the values of these coefficients, and found that S6 is only correct to one significant digit! I would expect it to be 1/(13!), which Windows Calculator and Google Calc tell me is 1.6059044...e-10, not 1.58969099521155010221e-10 (which is the value for S6 in the code). Even S5 differs in the fifth digit from 1/(11!). Can someone explain this discrepancy? Specifically, how are those coefficients (S1 through S6) determined?
/* @(#)k_sin.c 1.3 95/01/18 */
/*
* ====================================================
* Copyright (C) 1993 by Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
*
* Developed at SunSoft, a Sun Microsystems, Inc. business.
* Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this
* software is freely granted, provided that this notice
* is preserved.
* ====================================================
*/
/* __kernel_sin( x, y, iy)
* kernel sin function on [-pi/4, pi/4], pi/4 ~ 0.7854
* Input x is assumed to be bounded by ~pi/4 in magnitude.
* Input y is the tail of x.
* Input iy indicates whether y is 0. (if iy=0, y assume to be 0).
*
* Algorithm
* 1. Since sin(-x) = -sin(x), we need only to consider positive x.
* 2. if x < 2^-27 (hx<0x3e400000 0), return x with inexact if x!=0.
* 3. sin(x) is approximated by a polynomial of degree 13 on
* [0,pi/4]
* 3 13
* sin(x) ~ x + S1*x + ... + S6*x
* where
*
* |sin(x) 2 4 6 8 10 12 | -58
* |----- - (1+S1*x +S2*x +S3*x +S4*x +S5*x +S6*x )| <= 2
* | x |
*
* 4. sin(x+y) = sin(x) + sin'(x')*y
* ~ sin(x) + (1-x*x/2)*y
* For better accuracy, let
* 3 2 2 2 2
* r = x *(S2+x *(S3+x *(S4+x *(S5+x *S6))))
* then 3 2
* sin(x) = x + (S1*x + (x *(r-y/2)+y))
*/
#include "fdlibm.h"
#ifdef __STDC__
static const double
#else
static double
#endif
half = 5.00000000000000000000e-01, /* 0x3FE00000, 0x00000000 */
S1 = -1.66666666666666324348e-01, /* 0xBFC55555, 0x55555549 */
S2 = 8.33333333332248946124e-03, /* 0x3F811111, 0x1110F8A6 */
S3 = -1.98412698298579493134e-04, /* 0xBF2A01A0, 0x19C161D5 */
S4 = 2.75573137070700676789e-06, /* 0x3EC71DE3, 0x57B1FE7D */
S5 = -2.50507602534068634195e-08, /* 0xBE5AE5E6, 0x8A2B9CEB */
S6 = 1.58969099521155010221e-10; /* 0x3DE5D93A, 0x5ACFD57C */
#ifdef __STDC__
double __kernel_sin(double x, double y, int iy)
#else
double __kernel_sin(x, y, iy)
double x,y; int iy; /* iy=0 if y is zero */
#endif
{
double z,r,v;
int ix;
ix = __HI(x)&0x7fffffff; /* high word of x */
if(ix<0x3e400000) /* |x| < 2**-27 */
{if((int)x==0) return x;} /* generate inexact */
z = x*x;
v = z*x;
r = S2+z*(S3+z*(S4+z*(S5+z*S6)));
if(iy==0) return x+v*(S1+z*r);
else return x-((z*(half*y-v*r)-y)-v*S1);
}