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Wikipedia / Versine

The versine or versed sine is a trigonometric function found in some of the earliest (Sanskrit Aryabhatiya, Section I) trigonometric tables. The versine of an angle is 1 minus its cosine.

There are several related functions, most notably the coversine and haversine. The latter, half a versine, is of particular importance in the haversine formula of navigation.

Overview

The versine or versed sine is a trigonometric function already appearing in some of the earliest trigonometric tables. It is symbolized in formulas using the abbreviations , , , or . In Latin, it is known as the (flipped sine), , , or (arrow).

Expressed in terms of common trigonometric functions

There are several related functions corresponding to the versine:

  • The versed cosine, or vercosine, abbreviated , , or

  • The coversed sine or coversine (in Latin, or ), abbreviated , , , or

Special tables were also made of half of the versed sine, because of its particular use in the haversine formula used historically in navigation.

  • The haversed sine or haversine (), abbreviated , , , , , , , or . It is defined as

History and applications

Versine and coversine

The ordinary sine function (see note on etymology) was sometimes historically called the ("straight sine"), to contrast it with the versed sine (). The meaning of these terms is apparent if one looks at the functions in the original context for their definition, a unit circle:

For a vertical chord of the unit circle, the sine of the angle (representing half of the subtended angle ) is the distance (half of the chord). On the other hand, the versed sine of is the distance from the center of the chord to the center of the arc. Thus, the sum of (equal to the length of line ) and (equal to the length of line ) is the radius (with length 1). Illustrated this way, the sine is vertical (, literally "straight") while the versine is horizontal (, literally "turned against, out-of-place"); both are distances from to the circle.

This figure also illustrates the reason why the versine was sometimes called the , Latin for arrow. If the arc of the double-angle is viewed as a "bow" and the chord as its "string", then the versine is clearly the "arrow shaft".

In further keeping with the interpretation of the sine as "vertical" and the versed sine as "horizontal", is also an obsolete synonym for the abscissa (the horizontal axis of a graph).

In 1821, Cauchy used the terms (siv) for the versine and (cosiv) for the coversine.

As goes to zero, is the difference between two nearly equal quantities, so a user of a trigonometric table for the cosine alone would need a very high accuracy to obtain the versine in order to avoid catastrophic cancellation, making separate tables for the latter convenient. Even with a calculator or computer, round-off errors make it advisable to use the formula for small.

Another historical advantage of the versine is that it is always non-negative, so its logarithm is defined everywhere except for the single angle () where it is zerothus, one could use logarithmic tables for multiplications in formulas involving versines.

In fact, the earliest surviving table of sine (half-chord) values (as opposed to the chords tabulated by Ptolemy and other Greek authors), calculated from the Surya Siddhantha of India dated back to the 3rd century BC, was a table of values for the sine and versed sine (in increments from to ).

The versine appears as an intermediate step in the application of the half-angle formula , derived by Ptolemy, that was used to construct such tables.

Haversine

The haversine, in particular, was important in navigation because it appears in the haversine formula, which is used to reasonably accurately compute distances on an astronomic spheroid (see issues with the Earth's radius vs. sphere) given angular positions (e.g., longitude and latitude). One could also use directly, but having a table of the haversine removed the need to compute squares and square roots.

An early utilization by José de Mendoza y Ríos of what later would be called haversines is documented in 1801.

The first known English equivalent to a table of haversines was published by James Andrew in 1805, under the name "Squares of Natural Semi-Chords".

In 1835, the term haversine (notated naturally as hav. or base-10 logarithmically as log. haversine or log. havers.) was coined by James Inman in the third edition of his work Navigation and Nautical Astronomy: For the Use of British Seamen to simplify the calculation of distances between two points on the surface of the Earth using spherical trigonometry for applications in navigation. Inman also used the terms nat. versine and nat. vers. for versines.

Other high-regarded tables of haversines were those of Richard Farley in 1856 and John Caulfield Hannyngton in 1876.

The haversine continues to be used in navigation and has found new applications in recent decades, as in Bruce D. Stark's method for clearing lunar distancess utilizing Gaussian logarithms since 1995 or in a more compact method for sight reduction since 2014.

Modern uses

While the usage of the versine, coversine and haversine as well as their inverse functionss can be traced back centuries, the names for the other five cofunctions appear to be of much younger origin.

One period () of a versine or, more commonly, a haversine waveform is also commonly used in signal processing and control theory as the shape of a pulse or a window function (including Hann, Hann–Poisson and Tukey windows), because it smoothly (continuous in value and slope) "turns on" from zero to one (for haversine) and back to zero. In these applications, it is named Hann function or raised-cosine filter.

Mathematical identities

Definitions

Circular rotations

Derivatives and integrals

Inverse functions

Inverse functions like arcversine (arcversin, arcvers, avers, aver), arcvercosine (arcvercosin, arcvercos, avercos, avcs), arccoversine (arccoversin, arccovers, acovers, acvs), arccovercosine (arccovercosin, arccovercos, acovercos, acvc), archaversine (archaversin, archav, haversin−1, invhav, ahav, ahvs, ahv, hav−1), archavercosine (archavercosin, archavercos, ahvc), archacoversine (archacoversin, ahcv) or archacovercosine (archacovercosin, archacovercos, ahcc) exist as well:

Other properties

These functions can be extended into the complex plane.

Maclaurin series:

Approximations

When the versine is small in comparison to the radius , it may be approximated from the half-chord length (the distance shown above) by the formula

Alternatively, if the versine is small and the versine, radius, and half-chord length are known, they may be used to estimate the arc length ( This formula was known to the Chinese mathematician Shen Kuo, and a more accurate formula also involving the sagitta was developed two centuries later by Guo Shoujing.

A more accurate approximation used in engineering

Arbitrary curves and chords

The term versine is also sometimes used to describe deviations from straightness in an arbitrary planar curve, of which the above circle is a special case. Given a chord between two points in a curve, the perpendicular distance from the chord to the curve (usually at the chord midpoint) is called a versine measurement. For a straight line, the versine of any chord is zero, so this measurement characterizes the straightness of the curve. In the limit as the chord length goes to zero, the ratio goes to the instantaneous curvature. This usage is especially common in rail transport, where it describes measurements of the straightness of the rail tracks and it is the basis of the Hallade method for rail surveying.

The term sagitta (often abbreviated sag) is used similarly in optics, for describing the surfaces of lenseses and mirrors.

See also

Notes

References

Further reading