> Yes, but within the defined mathematical ranges for sine and cosine --
> [0, 2 * PI) -- the processor intrinsics are quite accurate.
If you were to look up a serious math book like Abramowitz&Stegun1965
you would see a definition like
sin z = ((exp(iz)-exp(-iz))/2i [4.3.1]
for all complex numbers, thus in particular valid for z=x+0i for all real x.
If you wanted to stick to reals only, a serious math text would probably use
the series expansion around zero [4.3.65]
And there is the answer to your question: if you just think of "sin"
as something
with angles and triangles, then sin(2^90) makes very little sense. But "sin"
occurs other places where there are no triangles in sight. For example:
Gamma(z)Gamma(1-z) = pi/sin(z pi) [6.1.17]
or in series expansions of the cdf for the Student t distribution [26.7.4]
Morten
