3 ms·
...they don't let you solve any problem that you couldn't before But they did have a purpose, years ago. Before pocket calculators, when people used slide rule
by jloughry 13y ago
...they don't let you solve any problem that you couldn't before
But they did have a purpose, years ago. Before pocket calculators, when people used slide rules and log tables, a table of haversines helped avoid nasty loss-of-precision errors near the roots of a function.
- dalke 13y agoTo emphasize your response, the article goes into depth on this exact point: > I must admit I was a bit disappointed when I looked these up. They’re all just simple combinations of dear old sine and cosine. Why did they even get names?! ... > The secret trig functions, like logarithms, made computations easier. Versine and haversine were used the most often. Near the angle θ=0, cos(θ) is very close to 1. If you were doing a computation that had 1-cos(θ) in it, your computation might be ruined if your cosine table didn’t have enough significant figures.