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The higher-order derivative test or general derivative test is able to determine whether a function's critical points are maxima, minima, or points of inflection for a wider variety of functions than the second-order derivative test. As shown below, the second-derivative test is mathematically identical to the special case of n = 1 in the ...
This expression is Newton's difference quotient (also known as a first-order divided difference). The slope of this secant line differs from the slope of the tangent line by an amount that is approximately proportional to h. As h approaches zero, the slope of the secant line approaches the slope of the tangent line.
For arbitrary stencil points and any derivative of order < up to one less than the number of stencil points, the finite difference coefficients can be obtained by solving the linear equations [6] ( s 1 0 ⋯ s N 0 ⋮ ⋱ ⋮ s 1 N − 1 ⋯ s N N − 1 ) ( a 1 ⋮ a N ) = d !
In an analogous way, one can obtain finite difference approximations to higher order derivatives and differential operators. For example, by using the above central difference formula for f ′(x + h / 2 ) and f ′(x − h / 2 ) and applying a central difference formula for the derivative of f ′ at x, we obtain the central difference approximation of the second derivative of f:
For this reason, the Euler method is said to be a first-order method, while the midpoint method is second order. We can extrapolate from the above table that the step size needed to get an answer that is correct to three decimal places is approximately 0.00001, meaning that we need 400,000 steps.
For example, consider the ordinary differential equation ′ = + The Euler method for solving this equation uses the finite difference quotient (+) ′ to approximate the differential equation by first substituting it for u'(x) then applying a little algebra (multiplying both sides by h, and then adding u(x) to both sides) to get (+) + (() +).
First-order means that only the first derivative of y appears in the equation, and higher derivatives are absent. Without loss of generality to higher-order systems, we restrict ourselves to first-order differential equations, because a higher-order ODE can be converted into a larger system of first-order equations by introducing extra variables.
An illustration of the five-point stencil in one and two dimensions (top, and bottom, respectively). In numerical analysis, given a square grid in one or two dimensions, the five-point stencil of a point in the grid is a stencil made up of the point itself together with its four "neighbors".