Taylor Series and its General Form

Khaled Ardah May 21, 2013

Introduction

The Taylor series is a representation of a function as an innite sum of terms calculated from the values of its derivatives at a single point. If the series is centered at zero, the series is also called a Maclaurin series. Generally a nite number of terms are used instead of innite number of terms to nd the approximate a function.

Motivation

In particular, the aim was to develop a method for representing a (dieretiable) function f(x) as an (innite) sum of powers of x. The main thought-process behind the method is that powers of x are easy to evaluate, dierentiate and integrate, so by rewriting complicated functions as sums of powers of x we can greatly simplify our analysis.

Single Variable Taylor Series

A one-dimensional Taylor series expansion of a real function f(x) about a point x = a is given by: f (a) f n (a) f (a) (x a) + (x a)2 + ... + (x a)n + ... 1! 2! n!

f(x) = f(a) +

which can be written in the more compact sigma notation as: f(x) = f n (a) (x a)n n ! n=0

Note: If a = 0, the expansion is known as a Maclaurin series.

Taylor Series for Multiple Variables

To implement taylor series for a function which depents on more than one variable, four variables f(x,y,z,t) etc. First, we consider a point (a,b,c,d) where we implement the Taylor series. Now dx = a, dy = b, dz = c, dt = d. Then, we go for total derivative in nding the derivatives at the point. ie., f (a, b, c, d), f (a, b, c, d), f (a, b, c, d), etc., as x, y, z, t are interdependent. df = d2 f = d3 f = df df df df dx + dy + dz + dt dx dy dz dt

d(df ) d(df ) d(df ) d(df ) dx + dy + dz + dt dx dy dz dt

d(d2 f ) d(d2 f ) d(d2 f ) d(d2 f ) dx + dy + dz + dt dx dy dz dt

The derivative in general can be written as:

dn f = [ dn f = [ Then;

df df df df dx + dy + dz + dt]n dx dy dz dt

d d d d dx + dy + dz + dt]n f (x, y, z, t) dx dy dz dt

f (x, y, z, t) = f (a, b, c, d) +

1 d d d d [ (x a) + (y b) + (z c) + (t d)]f + 1! dx dy dz dt

1 d d d d [ (x a) + (y b) + (z c) + (t d)]2 f + ....+ 2! dx dy dz dt 1 d d d d [ (x a) + (y b) + (z c) + (t d)]n f + .... n! dx dy dz dt Then we can generalize the Taylor series to functions of more than one variable with:

T (x1 , ..., xk ) =
n1=0 n2=0

....
nk

(x1 a1 )n1 ...(xk ak )nk dn1 +...+nk f ( n1 )(a1 , ..., ak ) k n1 !...nk ! dx1 ...dxn k =0