Taylor maclaurin series - Rhea

A Guide to Taylor and Maclaurin Series

by: Kathryn Marsh, proud Member of the Math Squad.

 keyword: taylor series, maclaurin series 

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this tutorial is to give an overview of Taylor and Maclaurin Series; what they are, how to derive them, and a few applications. This is meant to be a guide to UNDERSTANDING them and finding Taylor Series expansions of functions, not just being able to solve problems on your homework because math is a lot more fun that way :).

 Contents
- The Almighty Power Series
- What's a Taylor Series? 
- Why is this useful again?
- References

The Almighty Power Series

Before we get too deep into the magic of Taylor Series, we need to start with a firm understanding of the power series. So let's take a look at what a power series is.

A power series is just a polynomial that may or may not have a finite degree. Formally, this is anything of the form

$ \sum_{n=0}^{\infty} c_n x^n = c_0 + c_1 x + c_2 x^2 + c_3 x^3 + ... $

where the $ \ c_n $'s can be any constant and x is a variable.

Sometimes it is more useful to write a power series in another form, called a power series centered at a or a power series about a which we write $ \sum_{n=0}^{\infty} c_n (x-a)^n = c_0 + c_1 (x-a) + c_2 (x-a)^2 + c_3 (x-a)^3 + ... $

Let's say we have the following function.

$ \ f(x)=c_0 + c_1 (x-a) + c_2 (x-a)^2 + c_3 (x-a)^3 + ... $

Now as soon as we choose a specific x to plug into our function, we have an infinite series which may or may not converge. The domain for this function is the set of all x's for which the series converges.

How would we go about actually finding which x values are in the domain? To do this, we treat x as a number and proceed the same as if we had any other infinite series. Recall that we have several tests at our disposal for finding whether a series converges or not, namely, the integral test, the comparison and limit comparison tests, alternating series test, the p-series test, the ratio test, and the root test. In general, the ratio test is the most useful for these kinds of series but it may be that another test would also work.

Now, if we apply the ratio test to our function we can get three possible outcomes:

(i) The series only converges when x=a.

(ii) The series converges for all x.

(iii) There is some positive number R such that the series converges if $ \ |x-a|<R $ and diverges if $ \ |x-a|>R $.

We call this R the radius of convergence and in the case of (i) we say R=0, and in the case of (ii) we say R=$ \infty $.

Let's try an example. Find the radius of convergence of the power series. $ f(x)= $

TOPIC 3

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TOPIC 2

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REFERENCES

[1] "Loream Ipsum" <http://www.lipsum.com/>.

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