[Newbie] expansion of a function as a power series
Subject: [Newbie] expansion of a function as a power series
From: Daniel Lakeland
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:36:51 -0700
On Wed, Jul 25, 2007 at 07:13:26PM +0100, Rupert Swarbrick wrote:
> The other question still stands: is there a general way to get a higher
> taylor coefficient of a function that's more computationally efficient
> than computing all the lower ones?
>
> And can one do it in maxima?
>
> Rupert
>
> P.S. I haven't really thought about this, so it might be mathematically
> trivial or impossible...
If you just want a single coefficient of a higher order term, take a
look at the definition of the taylor series:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_series
You compute the nth derivative of your function and evaluate it at the
expansion point, then divide by n!
--
Daniel Lakeland
dlakelan at street-artists.org
http://www.street-artists.org/~dlakelan