[Axiom-developer] Bug 215: sin asin(7.0::COMPLEX FLOAT)

[Waldek Hebisch]

The problem here is that sin asin(7.0::COMPLEX FLOAT) give something
close to -7.  This is due to wrong bunch cuts during evaliation.
Namely in trigcat we have:

asin x == atan(x/sqrt(1-x**2))

this formula for asin has wrong branch cuts. When x is real and bigger
then 1 sqrt(1-x**2) is imaginary with positive imaginary part. So
x/sqrt(1-x**2) is imaginary with _negative_ imaginary part. atan has
branch cut on %i*[-1, %minusInfinity], with jump discontinuity when
real part goes to 0 trough positve values. This discontinuity means
that values of asin are wrong (of opposite sign) for big real x.

There is an easy workaround, put:

asin x == -atan(-x/sqrt(1-x**2))

However, the problem with asin is just one special case.  We
would like to support many multivalued special functions (which in
numerical version require branch cuts).  Tracking that we get
"correct" values on cuts may well take significant portion of
effert to implements those functions.  OTOH computing with
values on branch cuts does not seem very useful.  So I am tempted
to declare that arguments branch cuts are errors (like divison
by 0).

-- 
                              Waldek Hebisch
address@hidden