Mark Dickinson <dicki...@gmail.com> added the comment:

I think that recipe is meant more as a simple example of what's possible than 
as a bullet-proof library function.  Can you suggest changes that would improve 
accuracy while also keeping the recipe clear and simple?

The usual method for sin/cos is to do an initial reduction by an integral 
multiple of pi/2 so that the argument lies in [-pi/4, pi/4].  (Though that's 
still problematic for very large arguments, where pi needs to be computed to 
many more places than the desired output accuracy.)

Perhaps it would be best to just add a note to the docstring indicating that 
this is an implementation that's suitable for small arguments; for large 
arguments, more sophisticated algorithms are needed.

----------
nosy: +rhettinger

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Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue7770>
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