Chapter Two Power Series

Learning Objectives: At the completion of this Chapter a student will be able to:-

 Identify a power series and provide examples of them.

 Determine the radius of convergence and interval of convergence of a power
series.
 Use a power series to represent a function.
 Differentiate and integrate the power series
 Find Taylor Series and Macluarin Series expansion of a given function
 Find nth degree Taylor polynomial and its application
2.1 Definition of Power Series any point
A power series is a type of series with terms involving a variable. More specifically, if the
variable is x , then all the terms of the series involve powers of x . As a result, a power
series can be thought of as an infinite polynomial. Power series are used to represent common
functions and also to define new functions. In this section we define power series and show
how to determine when a power series converges and when it diverges. We also show how to
represent certain functions using power series.

Definition: A series of the form

n

∑ c n( x−a)n=c 0 +c 1 ( x−a)+ c2 ( x−a)2+ …+c n ( x−a)n +…is called a power series in ( x−a)
n=0

or a power series center at a or a power series at a.