After reading this chapter, you should be able to

1. understand the basics of Taylor’s theorem,

2. write transcendental and trigonometric functions as Taylor’s polynomial,
3. use Taylor’s theorem to find the values of a function at any point, given the values of
the function and all its derivatives at a particular point,
4. calculate errors and error bounds of approximating a function by Taylor series, and
5. revisit the chapter whenever Taylor’s theorem is used to derive or explain numerical
methods for various mathematical procedures.

The use of Taylor series exists in so many aspects of numerical methods that it is imperative
to devote a separate chapter to its review and applications. For example, you must have
come across expressions such as
(1)

(2)

(3)
All the above expressions are actually a special case of Taylor series called the Maclaurin
series. Why are these applications of Taylor’s theorem important for numerical methods?
Expressions such as given in Equations (1), (2) and (3) give you a way to find the
approximate values of these functions by using the basic arithmetic operations of addition,
subtraction, division, and multiplication.

Example 1
Find the value of using the first five terms of the Maclaurin series.
Solution
The first five terms of the Maclaurin series for is

The exact value of up to 5 significant digits is also 1.2840.

But the above discussion and example do not answer our question of what a Taylor series is.
Here it is, for a function
(4)
provided all derivatives of exist and are continuous between and .

01.07.1
01.07.2 Chapter 01.07

What does this mean in plain English?

As Archimedes would have said (without the fine print), “Give me the value of the function at
a single point, and the value of all (first, second, and so on) its derivatives, and I can give
you the value of the function at any other point”.
It is very important to note that the Taylor series is not asking for the expression of
the function and its derivatives, just the value of the function and its derivatives at a single
point.
Now the fine print: Yes, all the derivatives have to exist and be continuous between
(the point where you are) to the point, where you are wanting to calculate the function
at. However, if you want to calculate the function approximately by using the order
Taylor polynomial, then derivatives need to exist and be continuous in the
closed interval , while the derivative needs to exist and be continuous in the
open interval .

Example 2

Take , we all know the value of . We also know the and

. Similarly and . In a way, we know the value of

and all its derivatives at . We do not need to use any calculators, just plain
differential calculus and trigonometry would do. Can you use Taylor series and this
information to find the value of ?
Solution

So

, 1

,
Taylor Theorem Revisited 01.07.3

,
Hence

The value of I get from my calculator is which is very close to the value I just
obtained. Now you can get a better value by using more terms of the series. In addition, you
can now use the value calculated for coupled with the value of (which can be
calculated by Taylor series just like this example or by using the identity) to
find value of at some other point. In this way, we can find the value of for any
value from to and then can use the periodicity of , that is
to calculate the value of at any other point.

Example 3

Derive the Maclaurin series of

Solution

In the previous example, we wrote the Taylor series for around the point .
Maclaurin series is simply a Taylor series for the point .
,
,
,
,
,
,

Using the Taylor series now,

01.07.4 Chapter 01.07

So

Example 4
Find the value of given that , , , and all other
higher derivatives of at are zero.
Solution

Since fourth and higher derivatives of are zero at .

Note that to find exactly, we only needed the value of the function and all its derivatives
at some other point, in this case, . We did not need the expression for the function and
all its derivatives. Taylor series application would be redundant if we needed to know the
expression for the function, as we could just substitute in it to get the value of .
Actually the problem posed above was obtained from a known function
where , , , , and all other higher
derivatives are zero.

Error in Taylor Series

As you have noticed, the Taylor series has infinite terms. Only in special cases such as a
finite polynomial does it have a finite number of terms. So whenever you are using a Taylor
series to calculate the value of a function, it is being calculated approximately.

The Taylor polynomial of order of a function with continuous derivatives in

the domain is given by
Taylor Theorem Revisited 01.07.5

where the remainder is given by

.
where

that is, is some point in the domain .

Example 5
The Taylor series for at point is given by

a) What is the truncation (true) error in the representation of if only four terms of the
series are used?
b) Use the remainder theorem to find the bounds of the truncation error.
Solution
a) If only four terms of the series are used, then

The truncation (true) error would be the unused terms of the Taylor series, which then are

b) But is there any way to know the bounds of this error other than calculating it
directly? Yes,

where
, , and
is some point in the domain . So in this case, if we are using four terms of the
Taylor series, the remainder is given by

Since
01.07.6 Chapter 01.07

The error is bound between

So the bound of the error is less than which does concur with the calculated error
of .

Example 6
The Taylor series for at point is given by

As you can see in the previous example that by taking more terms, the error bounds decrease
and hence you have a better estimate of . How many terms it would require to get an
approximation of within a magnitude of true error of less than ?
Solution
Using terms of the Taylor series gives an error bound of

Since

So if we want to find out how many terms it would require to get an approximation of
within a magnitude of true error of less than ,

(as we do not know the value of but it is less than 3).

So 9 terms or more will get within an error of in its value.

Taylor Theorem Revisited 01.07.7

We can do calculations such as the ones given above only for simple functions. To
do a similar analysis of how many terms of the series are needed for a specified accuracy for
any general function, we can do that based on the concept of absolute relative approximate
errors discussed in Chapter 01.02 as follows.
We use the concept of absolute relative approximate error (see Chapter 01.02 for
details), which is calculated after each term in the series is added. The maximum value of ,
for which the absolute relative approximate error is less than % is the least
number of significant digits correct in the answer. It establishes the accuracy of the
approximate value of a function without the knowledge of remainder of Taylor series or the
true error.
01.07.8 Chapter 01.07

INTRODUCTION TO NUMERICAL METHODS

Topic Taylor Theorem Revisited
Summary These are textbook notes on Taylor Series
Major All engineering majors
Authors Autar Kaw
Date January 25, 2025
Web Site http://numericalmethods.eng.usf.edu