Another Gaussian approximation

The function (1 + cos(x))/2 gives a fair approximation to the Gaussian density exp(−x²) You can make the approximation much better by raising it to a power. The function ((1 + cos(x))/2)4 gives a good lower bound and ((1 + cos(x))/2)3.5597 gives a good upper bound. More on that here. There are other ways of […] The post Another Gaussian approximation first appeared on John D. Cook .