UECM1693/UECM2623/UGCM2623

Tutorial N1: Numerical Differentiation & Integration

1. Given the following table of data:

x 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4

f (x) 4.9530 6.0496 7.3891 9.0250 11.0232

(a) Use forward and backward difference approximations of O(h) and a central difference ap-
proximation of O(h2 ) to estimate the first derivative of f (x) at x = 2 using a step size
h = 0.2.
(b) Find the second derivative of f (x) at x = 2 with central difference approximation using
step size h = 0.2.
Answer: (a) 8.1795, 6.6975, 7.4385 (b) 7.41

Z 2
x
2. (a) Use the Trapezoidal Rule with a step size of h = 0.5 to estimate the integral dx.
0 x+1
Compute each term in the trapezoidal approximation to 4 decimal places , and round the
answer to 3 decimal places.
(b) Find the exact value of the integral.
(c) Hence, calculate the percentage relative error of this approximation.
Answer: (a) 0.883 (b) 0.9014 (c) 2.008%

3. Suppose the graph of a continuous nonnegative function f contains the following points:

(1, 0.4), (2, 0.6), (3, 1.2), (4, 0.8), (5, 0.5).

Use Simpson’s Rule and all the given points to approximate the area between the curve y = f (x)
and the x-axis on the interval [1, 5].
Answer: 2.9667 square units

4. An a.c. current, i, varies with time , t, according to the table :

t (s) 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6

i(t)(A) 0.0 0.25 0.31 0.43 0.37 0.20 0.0

The RMS current ,iRM S , is given by

s
Z 0.6
1
iRM S = i2 dt.
0.6 0

Use Simpson’s rule to approximate iRM S .

Answer: 0.3 A

1
 Z 1
2
5. Consider the trapezoidal approximation Tn to the integral I = e−x dx for an equally spaced
0
partition with n subintervals. Use the trapezoidal error estimate to determine how large n must
be in order to guarantee that Tn differs from I by at most 0.01.
Answer: 5

6. How large should we takeZn (the number of subintervals) in order to guarantee that the Simpson’s
5
1
Rule approximation for dx is accurate to within 0.0001?
1 x
Answer: 36