The Dottie Number

Lawrence C. Paulson đź“§

June 13, 2026

This is a development version of this entry. It might change over time and is not stable. Please refer to release versions for citations.

Abstract

The Dottie number is the unique fixed point $d$ of the cosine function: $\cos d = d$. It is approximately 0.739085133215.

This theory establishes the Dottie number's key properties: the fixed point exists (by the intermediate value theorem) and is unique (because $\cos x - x$ has a strictly negative derivative). Next, the value of $d$ to 12 decimal places is shown using the approximation proof method. Two more properties of $d$ are also shown: first, that it is transcendental (via the Hermite–Lindemann–Weierstrass theorem); second, that it is a universal attractor, in the sense that iterating the cosine function from any real starting point converges to it.

License

BSD License

Note

The formalisation was created with the help of Claude 4.6, but heavily rewritten and generalised manually.

Topics

Session Dottie_Number