commands → arcsin

arcsin(x)

The arcsin command computes the inverse sine of x where x is in radians. If x is a floating point number then a floating point result is computed, otherwise the result is an exact symbolic value.

Examples 

# hardware floating point
arcsin(1.0);
	1.5707963267949

# symbolic
arcsin(1);
	1/2*pi

Algorithm

To compute arcsin(x) in extended precision, we use Newton's method to invert the sin function.

References

Gullberg, Jan. Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers. Norton, 1996.