Today in Rough Approximations For ArcSine:
The Taylor series for sin and cos start with:
sin θ ≈ θ - (1/6) θ^3
cos θ ≈ 1 - (1/2) θ^2
So:
(θ - sin θ) / (1 - cos θ) ≈ θ/3
Solving for θ:
θ ≈ 3 sin θ / (2 + cos θ)
or:
asin(x) ≈ 3 x / (2 + √[1-x^2])
This isn’t too bad for small x, and has the correct value and derivative at x = 0, but we can make it match those things at x = ±1 as well by tweaking the coefficients:
asin(x) ≈ π x / (2 + (π-2)√[1-x^2])
This has a maximum proportional error of 0.011.