Taylor and Maclaurin Series

In the preceding section we were able to find power series representations for a certain restricted cla
of functions. Here we investigate more general problems: Which functions have power series
representations? How can we find such representations?

We start by supposing that is any function that can be represented by a power series:

(1)

Let's try to determine what the coefficients must be in terms of . To begin, notice that if we put in
Equation 1, then all terms after the first one are and we get

By Theorem 8.6.2, we can differentiate the series in Equation 1 term by term:

(2)

and substitution of in Equation 2 gives Now we differentiate both sides of Equation 2 and
obtain

(3)

Again we put in Equation 3. The result is

Let's apply the procedure one more time. Differentiation of the series in Equation 3 gives

(4)

and substitution of in Equation 4 gives

By now you can see the pattern. If we continue to differentiate and substitute , we obtain
Solving this equation for the th coefficient , we get

This formula remains valid even for if we adopt the conventions that and .

Thus we have proved the following theorem.

THEOREM: If has a power series representation (expansion) at , that is, if

(5)

Substituting this formula for back into the series, we see that if has a power series expansion at , then
must be of the following form.

(6)

The series in Equation 6 is called the Taylor series of the function at (or about or centered
at ). For the special case the Taylor series becomes

(7)

This case arises frequently enough that is is given the special name Maclaurin series.

NOTE: We have shown that if can be represented as a power series about , then is equal to the sum of
its Taylor series. But there exist functions that are not equal to the sum of their Taylor series. For example, one
can show that the function defined by
is not equal to its Maclaurin series.

EXAMPLE 1: Find the Maclaurin series of the function and its radius of convergence.

The conclusion we can draw from (5) and Example 1 is that if has a power series expansion at , then

So how can we determine whether does have a power series representation?

Let's investigate the more general question: Under what circumstances is a function equal to the sum of its Taylo
series? In other words, if has derivatives of all orders, when is it true that

As with any convergent series, this means that is the limit of the sequence of partial sums. In the cas
of the Taylor series, the partial sums are

Notice that is a polynomial of degree called the th-degree Taylor polynomial of at . For instance
for the exponential function , the result of Example 1 shows that the Taylor polynomials at (or
Maclaurin polynomials) with , and 3 are
In general, is the sum of its Taylor series if

If we let

then is called the remainder of the Taylor series. If we can somehow show that , then
follows that

We have therefore proved the following.

THEOREM: If , where is the th-degree Taylor polynomial of at and

(8)

for , then is equal to the sum of its Taylor series on the interval .

In trying to show that for a specific function , we usually use the expression in the next
theorem.

THEOREM (TAYLOR'S FORMULA): If has derivatives in an interval that contains the number ,
then for in there is a number strictly between and such that the remainder term in the Taylor series c
be expressed as
NOTE 1: For the special case , if we put and in Taylor's Formula, we get

(9)

which is the Mean Value Theorem. In fact, Theorem 9 can be proved by a method similar to the pro
of the Mean Value Theorem.

NOTE 2: Notice that the remainder term

(10)

is very similar to the terms in the Taylor series except that is evaluated at instead of at . All w
say about the number is that it lies somewhere between and . The expression for in Equation 10 is
known as Lagrange's form of the remainder term.

NOTE 3: In Section 8.8 we will explore the use of Taylor's Formula in approximating functions. Our immediate
use of it is in conjunction with Theorem 8. In applying Theorems 8 and 9 it is often helpful to make use of the
following fact:

(11)

This is true because we know from Example 1 that the series converges for all and so its
term approaches 0.

EXAMPLE 2: Prove that is equal to the sum of its Taylor series with (Maclaurin series).

From Example 2 it follows that

(12)
In particular, if we put in Equation 12, we obtain

(13)

EXAMPLE 3: Find the Taylor series for at .

Solution: We have and so, putting in the definition of a Taylor series (6), we get

Again it can be verified, as in Example 1, that the radius of convergence is . As in Example 2 w

(14)

We have two power series expansions for , the Maclaurin series in Equation 12 and the Taylor series in
Equation 14. The first is better if we are interested in values of near and the second is better if is near 2.

EXAMPLE 4: Find the Maclaurin series for and prove that it represents for all .

Solution: We arrange our computation in two columns as follows:

Since the derivatives repeat in a cycle of four, we can write the Maclaurin series as follows:
Using the remainder term (10) with , we have

where and lies between 0 and . But is or . In any

(15)

By Equation 11 the right side of this inequality approaches as , so by the Squeeze

(16)

EXAMPLE 5: Find the Maclaurin series for .

Solution 1: We arrange our computation in two columns as follows:

Since the derivatives repeat in a cycle of four, we can write the Maclaurin series as follows:
Solution 2: We differentiate the Maclaurin series for given by Equation 16:

Since the Maclaurin series for converges for all , Theorem 8.6.2 tells us that the differentiated series
for also converges for all . Thus

(17)

EXAMPLE 6: Find the Maclaurin series for .

REMARK: The power series that we obtained by indirect methods in Examples 5 and 6 and in
Section 8.6 are indeed the Taylor or Maclaurin series of the given functions because Theorem 5
asserts that, no matter how we obtain a power series representation

it is always true that . In other words, the coefficients are uniquely determined.

EXAMPLE 7: Find the Maclaurin series for , where is any real number.
Solution: Arranging our work in columns, we have

Therefore, the Maclaurin series of is

This series is called the binomial series. If its th term is , then

Thus by the Ratio Test the binomial series converges if and diverges if .

The traditional notation for the coefficients in the binomial series is

and these numbers are called the binomial coefficients. The following theorem states that
equal to the sum of its Maclaurin series. It is possible to prove this by showing that the remainder
term approaches , but that turns out to be quite difficult.

THEOREM (THE BINOMIAL SERIES): If is any real number and , then

Although the binomial series always converges when , the question of whether or not it converges
at the endpoints, , depends on the value of . It turns out that the series converges at 1 if and
both endpoints if . Notice that if is a positive integer and , then the expression for contains a
factor , so

for . This means that the series terminates and reduces to the ordinary Binomial Theorem when is a
positive integer.

EXAMPLE 8: Find the Maclaurin series for and its radius of

Solution: We write in a form where we can use the binomial series:

Using the binomial series with and with replaced by , we have

We collect in the following table, for future reference, some important Maclaurin
series that we have derived in this section and the preceding one.
One reason that Taylor series are important is that they enable us to integrate
functions that we couldn't previously handle. In fact, the function can't be
integrated by techniques discussed so far because its antiderivative is not an
elementary function (see Section 6.4). In the following example we write as the
Maclaurin series to integrate this function.

EXAMPLE 10: Evaluate .

Solution: Using the Maclaurin series for , we have