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Ho Taylor
Ho Taylor
Ho Taylor
The Taylor Series expansion of f (x) for points near x = a can be written: f (x) =
n=0
1 ( n) f (a) (x a)n n!
Expand through the rst few terms and take some derivatives. . . f (x) = f (a) + f (a) (xa) + 1 1 1 f (a) (xa)2 + f (a) (xa)3 + f (4) (a) (xa)4 + . . . 2! 3! 4!
1 1 1 f (a) (xa)2 + f (4) (a) (xa)3 + f (5) (a) (xa)4 + . . . 2! 3! 4! 1 (4) 1 1 f (x) = f (a) + f (a) (xa) + f (a) (xa)2 + f (5) (a) (xa)3 + f (6) (a) (xa)4 + . . . 2! 3! 4!
The nth derivative of the Taylor expansion for f (x) near x = a is the Taylor expansion of the nth derivative of f (x)! In the neighborhood of x = a, the Taylor expansion for f (x) reproduces the slope, curvature, and so on of f (x). Ultimately, this means that just about any function may be written as a polynomial using the Taylor Series - the major exceptions being functions that lack dierentiability at some order at x = a.
x2 x3 x4 x5 x6 + + + + + ... 2! 3! 4! 5! 6!
Approximations
Linearization
One linearizes a function by keeping the Taylor expansion terms up to rst-order in (x a). Because weve truncated the higher-order corrections, we wouldnt expect these approximations to be very good if we wandered too far away from x = a. The linearizations of those common functions near x = 0 ought to look real familiar. Keep in mind that theyre only valid for values of x near 0, which is to say for small values of x. sin x x cos x 1 ex 1 + x log (1 + x) x (1 + x)n 1 + nx