Jost Bürgi's method for calculating sines

DOI10.1016/J.HM.2016.03.001zbMATH Open1343.01011arXiv1510.03180OpenAlexW2962685841WikidataQ56116069 ScholiaQ56116069MaRDI QIDQ286028FDOQ286028

Authors: Menso Folkerts, Dieter Launert, Andreas Thom 

Publication date: 19 May 2016

Published in: Historia Mathematica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: For a long time it has been known that in the 16th century the Swiss mathematician Jost B"urgi found a new method for calculating sines, but no information about the details has been available. Recently a manuscript written by B"urgi himself has come to light in which he explains his algorithm. It is totally different from the traditional procedure which was used until the 17th century. In the first part of the article the standard method is explained which was rooted in Greek antiquity with Ptolemy's computation of chords and which was used in the Arabic-Islamic tradition and in the Western European Middle Ages for calculating chords as well as sines. The main part of the article deals with B"urgi's way. By only using additions and halving, his procedure is elementary and it converges quickly. B"urgi does not explain why his method is correct, but in the last part of the article a modern proof for the correctness of his algorithm is provided.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.03180

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zbMATH Keywords

difference methodKunstwegsine calculationtrigonometrical tablesJost Bürgi

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in the 17th century (01A45) Exponential and trigonometric functions (33B10) History of geometry (51-03) History of mathematics in the 15th and 16th centuries, Renaissance (01A40)

Cites Work

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Cited In (10)

• Jost Bürgi and the discovery of the logarithms
• Jost Bürgi's \textit{artificium} of 1586 in modern view, an ingenious algorithm for calculating tables of the sine function
• How Bürgi computed the sines of all integer angles simultaneously in 1586
• Jost Bürgi's methods of calculating sines, and possible transmission from India
• The development of mathematics in the early modern era. Proceedings of the colloquium, Annaberg-Buchholz, Germany, April 24--26, 2020
• Jost Bürgi's ``Coss: also a contribution to early analysis
• Sine tables rediscovered -- Bürgi's ``artistic path decoded
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Zigzags with Bürgi, Bernoulli, Euler and the Seidel-Entringer-Arnol'd triangle
• Computations of values of goniometric functions.

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