Dottie Number

The Dottie number is the name given by Kaplan (2007) to the unique real root of (namely, the unique real fixed point of the cosine function), which is 0.739085... (OEIS A003957). The name "Dottie" is of no fundamental mathematical significance since it refers to a particular French professor who--no doubt like many other calculator uses before and after her--noticed that whenever she typed a number into her calculator and hit the cosine button repeatedly, the result always converged to this value.

The number is well-known, having appeared in numerous elementary works on algebra already by the late 1880s (e.g., Bertrand 1865, p. 285; Heis 1886, p. 468; Briot 1881, pp. 341-343), and probably much earlier as well. It is also known simply as the cosine constant, cosine superposition constant, iterated cosine constant, or cosine fixed point constant. Arakelian (1981, pp. 135-136; 1995) has used the Armenian small letter ayb (first letter in the Armenian alphabet) to denote this constant.

This root is a simple nontrivial example of a universal attracting fixed point. It is also transcendental as a consequence of the Lindemann-Weierstrass theorem.

The Dottie number gives almost integers

(L. A. Broukhis, pers. comm.). and

(K. Hammond, pers. comm.).