Mark Dickinson <dickinsm@gmail.com> added the comment: There's not a whole lot that we can usefully say about the accuracy of `math.sin`, since CPython just wraps C's sin function. So we just inherit the behaviour of the platform libm. I don't think I understand what you mean by "backward error" in this context. What do you mean by: "as far as I can see, there is no backward error at all"? It may indeed be the case that math.sin is correctly rounded, or at least close to correctly rounded (e.g., errors consistently within 0.503 ulp or some such) on some platforms, but that's entirely platform dependent. ---------- nosy: +mark.dickinson _______________________________________ Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org> <https://bugs.python.org/issue35880> _______________________________________