Practical Considerations
For angles near 0 and π, arccosine is ill-conditioned and will thus calculate the angle with reduced accuracy in a computer implementation (due to the limited number of digits). Similarly, arcsine is inaccurate for angles near −π/2 and π/2. To achieve full accuracy for all angles, arctangent or atan2 should be used for the implementation.
Read more about this topic: Inverse Trigonometric Functions
Famous quotes containing the word practical:
“The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)