Unable to approximate the sine function using a neural network

Question

I am trying to approximate the sine() function using a neural network I wrote myself. I have tested my neural network on a simple OCR problem already and it worked, but I am

Answer 1

I get the same behavior if use vanilla gradient descent. Try using a different training algorithm.

As far as the Java applet is concerned, I did notice something interesting: it does converge if I use a "bipolar sigmoid" and I start with some non-random weights (such as results from a previous training using a Quadratic function).