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## Background

The idea of the Taylor polynomial approximation of order at , written , to a smooth function is to require that and have the same value at . Furthermore, their derivatives at must match up to order . For example the Taylor polynomial of order three for at would have to satisfy the conditions

You should check for yourself that the cubic polynomial satisfying these four conditions is

The general form of the Taylor polynomial approximation of order to is given by the following

Theorem 1   Suppose that is a smooth function in some open interval containing . Then the th degree Taylor polynomial of the function at the point is given by

We will be seeing this formula a lot, so it would be good for you to memorize it now! The notation is used in the definition to stand for the value of the -th derivative of at . That is, , , and so on. By convention, . Note that is fixed and so the derivatives are just numbers. That is, a Taylor polynomial has the form

which you should recognize as a power series that has been truncated.

Next: Accuracy and Tolerance Up: Taylor Polynomials Previous: Getting Started
William W. Farr
2006-04-03