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In calculus, Taylor's theorem gives an approximation of a -times differentiable function around a given point by a polynomial of degree , called the -th-order Taylor polynomial. For a smooth function , the Taylor polynomial is the truncation at the order k {\textstyle k} of the Taylor series of the function.
Second-order Taylor series approximation (in orange) of a function f (x,y) = e x ln(1 + y) around the origin. In order to compute a second-order Taylor series expansion around point (a, b) = (0, 0) of the function (,) = (+), one first computes all the necessary partial derivatives:
The formula for the best quadratic approximation to a function f around the point x = a is () + ′ () + ″ (). This quadratic approximation is the second-order Taylor polynomial for the function centered at x = a .
The above is obtained using a second order approximation, following the method used in estimating the first moment. It will be a poor approximation in cases where () is highly non-linear. This is a special case of the delta method.
Newton's method uses curvature information (i.e. the second derivative) to take a more direct route. In calculus , Newton's method (also called Newton–Raphson ) is an iterative method for finding the roots of a differentiable function f {\displaystyle f} , which are solutions to the equation f ( x ) = 0 {\displaystyle f(x)=0} .
The original use of interpolation polynomials was to approximate values of important transcendental functions such as natural logarithm and trigonometric functions.Starting with a few accurately computed data points, the corresponding interpolation polynomial will approximate the function at an arbitrary nearby point.
For the second-order approximations of the third central moment as well as for the derivation of all higher-order approximations see Appendix D of Ref. [3] Taking into account the quadratic terms of the Taylor series and the third moments of the input variables is referred to as second-order third-moment method. [4]
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: