15.

Newtons Sine and Cosine Series

Compute the trigonometric functions sine and cosine of a given angle (measured
in radians) without the use of tables.

The intent is to find a power series representation for sine and cosine. This is typically
done with a Maclaurin series

! f n 0 xn!
.
n

n0

today, but the derivation in Drries book (like those for e x , ln1  x, tan "1 x) uses the
average value of the derivative as the starting point. The average values of sine and cosine
from 0 to x  0 are

; 0 sin tdt 
1 x 1"cos x
x"0 x

; 0 cos tdt 
1 x sin x
x"0 x .

Starting with cos x t 1 for x  0, we find average (mean) values, and obtain sinx x t 1 or
sin x t x. Finding average values again, we get 1"cos t 12 x or cos x u 1 " x2 . Finding
x 2
x
mean values a third time gives us sinx x u 1 " x3! or sin x  x " x3! . Doing this repeatedly
2 3

results in

cos x  1 sin x  x
cos x  1" x2
2!
sin x  x" x3
3!

cos x  1" x2
2!
 x4
4!
sin x  x" x3
3!
 x5
5!

cos x  1" x2
2!
 x4
4!
" x6
6!
sin x  x" x3
3!
 x5
5!
" x7
7!

etc.
Each of the two trigonometric functions lies between two successive approximations of the
true value, and the error in approximating sin x or cos x by one of the approximations is less
n
than or equal to the difference between the approximations, i.e., xn! . In No. 13, it was
shown that lim xn
nv. n!
 0 for any x.
Thus for x u 0, we have

sin x  x" x3
3!
 x5
5!
" x7
7!
 ". . .
cos x  1 " x2
2!
 x4
4!
" x6
6!
 ". . .

The expansion for cos x is valid for x  0 also, because cos"x  cos x. The representation

1
of sin x is also valid for x  0, since in this case

sin x  " sin"x

"x "x "x
3 5 7
 "x " 3!
 5!
" 7!
 ". . .
 x" x3
3!
 x5
5!
" x7
7!
 ". . .

The error incurred by approximating sin x or cos x by the first n terms is no more than the
= (1 ( ). Then
first neglected term, i.e.,the n  1 st term. For example, let x  180
= 3 = 5
= " 180
sin 1 ( X 180 . 0174524064238 with an error of at most 180
. 00000000002. It
3! 5!
follows that to ten decimal places, sin 1 ( . 0174524064.