Newsgroups: comp.arch Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!rose!ccplumb From: ccplumb@rose.uwaterloo.ca (Colin Plumb) Subject: Re: sin(pi) (Was: Re: bizarre instructions) Message-ID: <1991Feb27.001143.5526@watdragon.waterloo.edu> Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes) Organization: University of Waterloo References: <15485@lanl.gov> <3028@charon.cwi.nl> <1991Feb26.175315.9719@linus.mitre.org> Date: Wed, 27 Feb 1991 00:11:43 GMT Lines: 16 bs@linus.mitre.org (Robert D. Silverman) wrote: >In article <3028@charon.cwi.nl> jurjen@cwi.nl (Jurjen NE Bos) writes: >:People owning a HP28 or HP48 know this. This calculator indeed delivers 0 for >:sin(pi), and 0.0548036651488 for sin(3.14159265359). Note that the latter >:value is correct to 12 digits. > >Huh??? sin(3.14159265359) = .05480366... ???? >This value is so far off as to be unbelievable. >When I punch sin(pi) into my HP I get -2.0676154e-13. >I would not TRUST a calculator that actually returned 0.0 The HP 28 and 48 have a symbolic "pi" symbol that they propagate, only converting to floating point when necessary. The trig functions all accept it, returning 0.5 for sin(pi/6), etc. -- -Colin Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com