Prosthaphaeresis – a Forgotten Algorithm

Autoři: Prof. RNDr. Štefan Porubský, DrSc.
Rok vydání: 2010
Typ publikace: Kapitola v monografii
Periodikum: Kepler’s Heritage in the Space Age. 400th Anniversary of Astronomia Nova
Projekty: Interaktivní a informační portál pro algoritmickou matematiku
Bibliografická citace: PORUBSKÝ, Štefan. Prosthaphaeresis – a Forgotten Algorithm. In: HADRAVOVÁ, A., MAHONEY, T.J., HADRAVA, P., eds. Kepler’s Heritage in the Space Age. 400th Anniversary of Astronomia Nova. Praha: Národní technické muzeum v Praze, 2010, S. 63-77. Acta historiae rerum naturalium necnon technicarum, 10. ISBN 978-80-7037-193-0.
ID: 349415

Abstrakt

Since the multiplication and division of large numbers is in general much more difficult to perform than addition and subtraction, various methods for reducing multiplication and division to the simpler operations of addition and subtraction were proposed to decrease the computational burden. One of the best-known such device is the use of logarithms. In this paper we summarize the history of a less known technique called prosthaphaeresis, which is based on the use of trigonometric formulas and trigonometric tables.