Thoughts on the power series for , which I found curious. Last week someone asked me a question about the Maclaurin series for . Finding the Maclaurin series is straightforward: Substituting for x gives We can find the radius and interval of convergence by using the Ratio test: This indicates that Maclaurin series…
A know a lot of people like mathematics because there is only one answer, everything is exact. Alas, that’s not really the case. Numbers written as non-terminating decimals are not “exact;” they must be rounded or truncated somewhere. Even things like and 5/17 may look “exact,” but if you ever had to measure something to…
Unit 10 covers sequences and series. These are BC only topics (CED – 2019 p. 177 – 197). These topics account for about 17 – 18% of questions on the BC exam. Topics 10.1 – 10.2 Topic 10.1: Defining Convergent and Divergent Series. Topic 10. 2: Working with Geometric Series. Including the formula for the sum…
One of my sons sent me the link to the videos below. They show a very unusual way to find the digits of π. The problems and its two solutions show the connections and the interplay between mathematics and physics. The quality of the illustrations and the verbal explanations are excellent. Here are the…
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…
