它如何做到这一点的本质在于杰拉德·惠特利的《应用数值分析》节选:

当你的软件程序要求计算机获取一个值时 或者，你有没有想过它是如何得到 如果它能计算的最强大的函数是多项式? 它不会在表中查找这些并进行插值!相反, 计算机逼近除多项式以外的所有函数 一个多项式，可以精确地给出值。

上面要提到的几点是，一些算法实际上是从表中插值的，尽管只是在前几次迭代中。还要注意它是如何提到计算机利用近似多项式而没有指定哪种类型的近似多项式。正如本文中其他人指出的那样，在这种情况下，切比雪夫多项式比泰勒多项式更有效。

OK kiddies, time for the pros.... This is one of my biggest complaints with inexperienced software engineers. They come in calculating transcendental functions from scratch (using Taylor's series) as if nobody had ever done these calculations before in their lives. Not true. This is a well defined problem and has been approached thousands of times by very clever software and hardware engineers and has a well defined solution. Basically, most of the transcendental functions use Chebyshev Polynomials to calculate them. As to which polynomials are used depends on the circumstances. First, the bible on this matter is a book called "Computer Approximations" by Hart and Cheney. In that book, you can decide if you have a hardware adder, multiplier, divider, etc, and decide which operations are fastest. e.g. If you had a really fast divider, the fastest way to calculate sine might be P1(x)/P2(x) where P1, P2 are Chebyshev polynomials. Without the fast divider, it might be just P(x), where P has much more terms than P1 or P2....so it'd be slower. So, first step is to determine your hardware and what it can do. Then you choose the appropriate combination of Chebyshev polynomials (is usually of the form cos(ax) = aP(x) for cosine for example, again where P is a Chebyshev polynomial). Then you decide what decimal precision you want. e.g. if you want 7 digits precision, you look that up in the appropriate table in the book I mentioned, and it will give you (for precision = 7.33) a number N = 4 and a polynomial number 3502. N is the order of the polynomial (so it's p4.x^4 + p3.x^3 + p2.x^2 + p1.x + p0), because N=4. Then you look up the actual value of the p4,p3,p2,p1,p0 values in the back of the book under 3502 (they'll be in floating point). Then you implement your algorithm in software in the form: (((p4.x + p3).x + p2).x + p1).x + p0 ....and this is how you'd calculate cosine to 7 decimal places on that hardware.

请注意，在FPU中大多数硬件实现的超越操作通常涉及一些微码和类似的操作(取决于硬件)。 切比雪夫多项式用于大多数先验多项式，但不是全部。例:使用Newton raphson方法的两次迭代，首先使用查询表，使用平方根更快。 同样，《计算机逼近》这本书会告诉你。

If you plan on implmementing these functions, I'd recommend to anyone that they get a copy of that book. It really is the bible for these kinds of algorithms. Note that there are bunches of alternative means for calculating these values like cordics, etc, but these tend to be best for specific algorithms where you only need low precision. To guarantee the precision every time, the chebyshev polynomials are the way to go. Like I said, well defined problem. Has been solved for 50 years now.....and thats how it's done.

Now, that being said, there are techniques whereby the Chebyshev polynomials can be used to get a single precision result with a low degree polynomial (like the example for cosine above). Then, there are other techniques to interpolate between values to increase the accuracy without having to go to a much larger polynomial, such as "Gal's Accurate Tables Method". This latter technique is what the post referring to the ACM literature is referring to. But ultimately, the Chebyshev Polynomials are what are used to get 90% of the way there.

享受。

切比雪夫多项式，正如在另一个答案中提到的，是函数和多项式之间的最大差异尽可能小的多项式。这是一个很好的开始。

在某些情况下，最大误差不是你感兴趣的，而是最大相对误差。例如，对于正弦函数，x = 0附近的误差应该比较大的值小得多;你想要一个小的相对误差。所以你可以计算sinx / x的切比雪夫多项式，然后把这个多项式乘以x。

Next you have to figure out how to evaluate the polynomial. You want to evaluate it in such a way that the intermediate values are small and therefore rounding errors are small. Otherwise the rounding errors might become a lot larger than errors in the polynomial. And with functions like the sine function, if you are careless then it may be possible that the result that you calculate for sin x is greater than the result for sin y even when x < y. So careful choice of the calculation order and calculation of upper bounds for the rounding error are needed.

例如，sinx = x - x^3/6 + x^5 / 120 - x^7 / 5040…如果你天真地计算sinx = x * (1 - x^2/6 + x^4/120 - x^6/5040…)，那么括号中的函数是递减的，如果y是x的下一个大的数字，那么有时siny会小于sinx。相反，计算sinx = x - x^3 * (1/6 - x^2/ 120 + x^4/5040…)，这是不可能发生的。

例如，在计算切比雪夫多项式时，通常需要将系数四舍五入到双倍精度。但是，虽然切比雪夫多项式是最优的，但系数舍入为双精度的切比雪夫多项式并不是具有双精度系数的最优多项式!

For example for sin (x), where you need coefficients for x, x^3, x^5, x^7 etc. you do the following: Calculate the best approximation of sin x with a polynomial (ax + bx^3 + cx^5 + dx^7) with higher than double precision, then round a to double precision, giving A. The difference between a and A would be quite large. Now calculate the best approximation of (sin x - Ax) with a polynomial (b x^3 + cx^5 + dx^7). You get different coefficients, because they adapt to the difference between a and A. Round b to double precision B. Then approximate (sin x - Ax - Bx^3) with a polynomial cx^5 + dx^7 and so on. You will get a polynomial that is almost as good as the original Chebyshev polynomial, but much better than Chebyshev rounded to double precision.

Next you should take into account the rounding errors in the choice of polynomial. You found a polynomial with minimum error in the polynomial ignoring rounding error, but you want to optimise polynomial plus rounding error. Once you have the Chebyshev polynomial, you can calculate bounds for the rounding error. Say f (x) is your function, P (x) is the polynomial, and E (x) is the rounding error. You don't want to optimise | f (x) - P (x) |, you want to optimise | f (x) - P (x) +/- E (x) |. You will get a slightly different polynomial that tries to keep the polynomial errors down where the rounding error is large, and relaxes the polynomial errors a bit where the rounding error is small.

所有这些将使您轻松地获得最多0.55倍于最后一位的舍入误差，其中+，-，*，/的舍入误差最多为0.50倍于最后一位。

不要用泰勒级数。切比雪夫多项式更快更准确，正如上面几个人指出的那样。下面是一个实现(最初来自ZX Spectrum ROM): https://albertveli.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/zx-sine/

是的，也有计算罪恶的软件算法。基本上，用数字计算机计算这些东西通常是用数值方法来完成的，比如近似表示函数的泰勒级数。

数值方法可以将函数近似到任意精度，因为浮点数的精度是有限的，所以它们非常适合这些任务。

它们通常在软件中实现，在大多数情况下不会使用相应的硬件(即汇编)调用。然而，正如Jason所指出的，这些是特定于实现的。

请注意，这些软件例程不是编译器源代码的一部分，而是可以在相应的库中找到，例如clib或GNU编译器的glibc。看到http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_mono/libc.html三角函数

如果你想要更大的控制权，你应该仔细评估你到底需要什么。一些典型的方法是查找表的插值、程序集调用(通常很慢)或其他近似方案，如Newton-Raphson的平方根。