Example 1. Consider the function . 1 (a). Find the terms up to in the Maclaurin series for f[x]. Solution 1 (a).

1 (a). Find the terms up to in the Maclaurin series for f[x].

Remark. If you just find the "Series" it will include a "Big " term, which cannot be used in either evaluations or graphing, we eliminate it with the command "Normal." The "Big term lets us know the power of x in the "remainder.

Aside. Of course the "full" Maclaurin series has an infinite number of terms. Mathematica is capable of finding sums of infinite series. The following is just for fun ! There are two ways to get infinite sums, the old way and the new way. First sum the series . The "telegraph" command is:

The "symbolic" command is:

Summation is located on the BasicInput palette. Now sum the power series .

Now graph f[x] and the Maclaurin polynomial s[x] over the interval [-1, 1].

Notice that there is a significant amount of error near . Let's investigate a smaller interval. Graph f[x] and the Maclaurin polynomial s[x] over the interval [-0.5, 0.5].

Background for part 1 (b). Use the fact that the series is "alternating" to investigate the error for the Maclaurin polynomial of degree n = 10 over the interval [-0.5, 0.5]. Now look closely at the "error" when the series is used to approximate the function. It becomes infinite near x = 1. For this reason we work on smaller intervals, in this case we chose [-0.5, 0.5]. How close are were the two curves in part (a) ?

Observation. We used the "Simplify" command to form e[x], without this command it would have looked different.

This series is "very nice" because it is alternating, and for that reason the error bound is the magnitude of the "next term" in the series.

The error bound for the entire interval [-0.5, 0.5] is

This estimate is "conservative" and is a little larger than the "actual" maximum error which occurred at

Example 1. Consider the function 1 (b). Investigate the error term 10 over the interval [-0.5, 0.5]. Solution 1 (b).

. for the Maclaurin polynomial of degree n =

Background. Lagrange form of the Remainder. The Lagrange form of the error is between 0 and x. where c is known to exist and lies somewhere

First we need to bound the size of the term for values of c in the interval . This can easily be done graphically, but to do it analytically with derivatives is quite messy. We choose to look at the following graph to see what is happening.

How big does be That's good enough. How big does the error that

get ? Looking at the graph we can estimate it to .

get ? Notice .

We will use the bound the first portion and then bound the portion over the interval [-0.5, 0.5] by evaluating it at

Now multiply the two numbers together to find the error bound for Lagrange's remainder formula.

This is a little larger than the actual maximum error we found. Remember is an "error bound."

Example 1. Consider the function . 1 (c). Find the terms up to in the Maclaurin series and see how close it approximates f[x]. Solution 1 (c). 1 (c). Find the terms up to approximates f[x]. in the Maclaurin series and see how close it , then plot the functions over

Go ahead "enjoy" and add terms in the series up to the interval [-0.8, 0.8].

Aside. Mathematica actually computes the higher derivatives of f[x] when calculating the Taylor series. Suppose you had to find the formula for the first 10 derivatives of f[x]. Could "you" do it ? Would you want to do it ?

Aside. The function is "infinitely differentiable", that is it has a derivatives of all orders. And the graph looks really smooth and nice for "all x."

So, why is the Maclaurin series severely restricted to the interval (-1,1). The answer lies in the study of complex numbers, we must look at the denominator and see where it vanishes.

The values are called singularities of f[x] and the radius of convergence is the distance from the origin to the closest one. But this topic must be left to another course called "complex analysis" which is offered each spring. All computer algebra systems such as Mathematica or Maple or Derive do there underlying computations using complex numbers. It is the mathematicians way to do it, and it is really fun to work with complex functions.

(c) John H. Mathews 2004

(c) John H. Mathews 2004