Month: February 2011

Taylor Series Exercise – Method 1

Taylor series is an important concept for learning numerical methods – not only for understanding how trigonometric and transcendental functions are calculated by a computer, but also for error analysis in numerical methods.  I asked the question below in the first test in the course, and half of the students did not get to the final answer.

Taylor Series Exercise Method 1

The pdf file of the solution is also available.

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Example: Solving a first order ODE by Laplace transforms

I have a audiovisual digital lecture on YouTube that shows the use of Euler’s method to solve a first order ordinary differential equation (ODE).  To show the accuracy of Euler’s method,  I compare the approximate answer to the exact answer.  A YouTube viewer asked me: How did I get the exact answer?

In this blog, I use the Laplace transform technique to find the exact answer to the ODE.  In a previous blog, I showed how to find the exact answer to the ODE by the classicial solution technique.

Solving First Order Linear ODE by Laplace Transform Solution TechniqueSolving First Order Linear ODE by Laplace Transform Solution Technique

The pdf file of the solution is also available.