Fast transcendent / trigonometric functions for Java

Computer Approximations by Hart. Tabulates Chebyshev-economized approximate formulas for a bunch of functions at different precisions.

Edit: Getting my copy off the shelf, it turned out to be a different book that just sounds very similar. Here’s a sin function using its tables. (Tested in C since that’s handier for me.) I don’t know if this will be faster than the Java built-in, but it’s guaranteed to be less accurate, at least. 🙂 You may need to range-reduce the argument first; see John Cook’s suggestions. The book also has arcsin and arctan.

#include <math.h>
#include <stdio.h>

// Return an approx to sin(pi/2 * x) where -1 <= x <= 1.
// In that range it has a max absolute error of 5e-9
// according to Hastings, Approximations For Digital Computers.
static double xsin (double x) {
  double x2 = x * x;
  return ((((.00015148419 * x2
             - .00467376557) * x2
            + .07968967928) * x2
           - .64596371106) * x2
          + 1.57079631847) * x;
}

int main () {
  double pi = 4 * atan (1);
  printf ("%.10f\n", xsin (0.77));
  printf ("%.10f\n", sin (0.77 * (pi/2)));
  return 0;
}