This blog post describes a lesson that investigates some ideas about sequences that are not stressed in the AP Calculus curriculum. The lesson could be an introduction to sequences. I think the lesson would work in an Algebra I course and is certainly suitable for a pre-calculus course. The investigation is of irrational numbers and…
The last BC question on the exams usually concerns sequences and series. The question usually asks students to write a Taylor or Maclaurin series and to answer questions about it and its interval of convergence, or about a related series found by differentiating or integrating. The topics may appear in other free-response questions and in…
This is a BC topic Good Question 16 (11-30-2018) What you get when you substitute. Geometric Series – Far Out (2-14-2017) A very interesting and instructive mistake Synthetic Summer Fun (7-10-2017) Finding the Taylor series coefficients without differentiating Error Bounds (2-22-2013) The alternating series error bound, and the Lagrange error bound The Lagrange Highway (5-20-15)…
This is a BC topic POWER SERIES (Maclaurin series and Taylor series) Introducing Power Series 1 (2-8-2013) Making better approximations Introducing Power Series 2 (2-11-2013) Graphing and seeing the interval of convergence Introducing Power Series 3 (2-13-2013) Questions pointing the way to power series Graphing Taylor Polynomials (2-7-2017) Using a graphing calculator to graphs Taylor…
This is a BC topic. SEQUENCES Everyday series (1-17-2017) The most familiar series: Numbers Amortization (2-9-2015) An important use of a (finite) series – Find you mortgage payment without calculus. Convergence Test List A summary of the tests. Download and copy for your students (and yourself) Which Convergence Test Should I Use? Part 1 (2-9-2018)…
I had an email last week from a teacher asking, how come I can use a substitution to find a power series for , and for , but not for ? The answer is that you can. Substituting (2x) in to the cosine’s series give you a Taylor series centered at x = 0, a…
Good Question 14 – The Integral Test I have no criteria for what constitutes a “Good Question” for this series of occasional posts. They are just questions that I found interesting, or that seem more than usually instructive, or that I learn something from. I cannot quote this question (2016 BC 92) since it is…
