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Motivation For Taylor's Theorem

Taylor's theorem ensures that quadratic approximations are more accurate than linear approximations near the point of approximation. The error in approximating a function by a polynomial goes to zero faster than any polynomial as the point of approximation is approached. While increasing the degree of an approximating polynomial can improve accuracy, some functions cannot be accurately approximated by polynomials regardless of degree.

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vijay kumar honnali
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42 views2 pages

Motivation For Taylor's Theorem

Taylor's theorem ensures that quadratic approximations are more accurate than linear approximations near the point of approximation. The error in approximating a function by a polynomial goes to zero faster than any polynomial as the point of approximation is approached. While increasing the degree of an approximating polynomial can improve accuracy, some functions cannot be accurately approximated by polynomials regardless of degree.

Uploaded by

vijay kumar honnali
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Taylor's theorem ensures that the quadratic approximation is, in a sufficiently small neighborhood of

, more accurate than the linear approximation. Specifically,

Here the error in the approximation is

which, given the limiting behavior of , goes to zero faster than as x tends to a.

Approximation of (blue) by its

Taylor polynomials of order centered at (red) and (green).

The approximations do not improve at all outside and , respectively.


Similarly, we might get still better approximations to f if we use polynomials of higher degree, since
then we can match even more derivatives with f at the selected base point.

In general, the error in approximating a function by a polynomial of degree k will go to zero much

faster than as x tends to a. However, there are functions, even infinitely differentiable ones,
for which increasing the degree of the approximating polynomial does not increase the accuracy of
approximation: we say such a function fails to be analytic at x = a: it is not (locally) determined by its
derivatives at this point.

Taylor's theorem is of asymptotic nature: it only tells us that the error in

an approximation by a -th order Taylor polynomial Pk tends to zero faster than any nonzero
-th degree polynomial as . It does not tell us how large the error is in any
concrete neighborhood of the center of expansion, but for this purpose there are explicit formulas for
the remainder term (given below) which are valid under some additional regularity assumptions on f.
These enhanced versions of Taylor's theorem typically lead to uniform estimates for the
approximation error in a small neighborhood of the center of expansion, but the estimates do not
necessarily hold for neighborhoods which are too large, even if the function f is analytic. In that
situation one may have to select several Taylor polynomials with different centers of expansion to
have reliable Taylor-approximations of the original function (see animation on the right.)

There are several ways we might use the remainder term:

1. Estimate the error for a polynomial Pk(x) of degree k estimating on a given interval
(a – r, a + r). (Given the interval and degree, we find the error.)

2. Find the smallest degree k for which the polynomial Pk(x) approximates to within a
given error tolerance on a given interval (a − r, a + r) . (Given the interval and error
tolerance, we find the degree.)

3. Find the largest interval (a − r, a + r) on which Pk(x) approximates to within a given


error tolerance. (Given the degree and error tolerance, we find the interval.)

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