Taylor Series

The statements

syms x
f = 1/(5 + 4*cos(x));
T = taylor(f, 'Order', 8)

return

T =
(49*x^6)/131220 + (5*x^4)/1458 + (2*x^2)/81 + 1/9

which is all the terms up to, but not including, order eight in the Taylor series for f(x):

Technically, T is a Maclaurin series, since its expansion point is a = 0.

These commands

syms x
g = exp(x*sin(x));
t = taylor(g, 'ExpansionPoint', 2, 'Order', 12);

generate the first 12 nonzero terms of the Taylor series for g about x = 2.

t is a large expression; enter

size(char(t))

ans =
           1       99791

to find that t has about 100,000 characters in its printed form. In order to proceed with using t, first simplify its presentation:

t = simplify(t);
size(char(t))

ans =
           1        6988

Next, plot these functions together to see how well this Taylor approximation compares to the actual function g:

xd = 1:0.05:3;
yd = subs(g,x,xd);
fplot(t, [1, 3])
hold on
plot(xd, yd, 'r-.')
title('Taylor approximation vs. actual function')
legend('Taylor','Function')

Special thanks is given to Professor Gunnar Bäckstrøm of UMEA in Sweden for this example.