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HP-12C Trigonometric Functions

Posted by Viktor Toth on 21 Oct 2001, 9:52 p.m.

By popular demand: a set of two programs that compute all six trigonometric functions (sin, cos, tan, arc sin, arc cos, and arc tan) on the HP-12C.

The first program at address 01 computes the cosine, tangent, and sine of the argument (in radians) and places the result in this order in X, Y, and Z. If all you need is the sine, you can stop at step 24. This program has four shortcomings:

1. For an argument of 0, the program fails, due to its use of the argument's reciprocal value in the iteration. It is possible to correct this deficiency by inserting four lines of code and adjusting line numbers accordingly:

   	01	x=0
   	02	INTG
   	03	x=0
   	04	GTO 29 (line 25 in the original listing)
   

2. For arguments outside the range of -PI/2 < x < PI/2, the sign of the cosine and tangent results may not be correct.

3. For arguments with a large (> PI) absolute value, results are increasingly inaccurate.

4. For arguments near n*PI/2 (n is integer), the accuracy may be less than desirable, due to rounding effects.

The second program has three entry points (marked) for computing the arc cosine, arc tangent, and arc sine of the argument. The result is in radians. This program also has shortcomings:

1. The arc cos is calculated incorrectly for negative arguments

2. Execution time is excessive if the arc sin argument's absolute value is near 1. (A workaround is to compute the arc cos instead, and then subtract the result from PI/2.)

Here are some typical results:

X       cos X           error           time            arc cos X       error           time
0.01    0.9999500004    < 2e-11          5 s            0.01000000167   < 3e-10          6 s
PI/4    0.7071067810    < 1e-10          8 s            0.7853981635    < 2e-10         37 s
PI/3    0.5000000003    < 1e-9          10 s            1.047197550     < 1e-9          75 s
1.77    0.1978888145    < 6e-10 (sign)  11 s            1.371592654	< 3e-10        430 s
3.14    0.9999987317    < 3e-11 (sign)  15 s            0.001592671386  < 3e-7           5 s

So, there's room for improvement.

And now, the programs themselves:

	01	STO 0
	02	STO 1
	03	1/x
	04	STO 2
	05	STO+2
	06	RCL 2
	07	STO/1
	08	Rv
	09	STO+2
	10	RCL 2
	11	CHS
	12	STO/1
	13	RCL 0
	14	RCL 1
	15	STO+0
	16	CLX
	17	RCL 0
	18	-
	19	x=0
	20	GTO 24
	21	Rv
	22	Rv
	23	GTO 05
	24	LASTx		X=sin
	25	1
	26	LASTx
	27	ENTER
	28	X
	29	-
	30	SQRT
	31	/
	32	LASTx
	33	R/S		X=cos	Y=tan	Z=sin
	=============
	34 acos	ENTER
	35	X
	36	1
	37	-
	38	CHS
	39	SQRT
	40	GTO 48
	41 atan	ENTER
	42	ENTER
	43	X
	44	1
	45	+
	46	SQRT
	47	/
	48 asin	STO 0
	49	STO 1
	50	ENTER
	51	X
	52	1
	53	STO*1
	54	STO*1
	55	1
	56	+
	57	STO/1
	58	1
	59	+
	60	STO/1
	61	x-y
	62	STO*1
	63	x-y
	64	RCL 0
	65	RCL 1
	66	STO+0
	67	CLX
	68	RCL 0
	69	-
	70	x=0
	71	GTO 74
	72	Rv
	73	GTO 53
	74	LASTx
	75	GTO 00

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