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Plot Taylor series for cos?

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Abdullah Azzam
Abdullah Azzam on 17 Oct 2015
Answered: Geoff Hayes on 17 Oct 2015
Hi guys, I have been trying to create a Taylor series to solve for cos x, it works will with me but when I want to plot the series it gives me a white graph, here is the code I have written, but I don't know where to but the plot so the series would be drawn
x = input('enter the angle')
n = input ('number of terms')
i=0;
sum=0;
past=0;
present=0;
while i<=n
error=abs(present-past)/present*100
sum= sum+(((-1)^i)*x^(2*i)/factorial(2*i))
past=present;
present=sum;
i=i+1;
end

Answers (1)

Geoff Hayes
Geoff Hayes on 17 Oct 2015
Abdullah - what do you want to plot? The sum at each iteration of the loop so that you can see the Taylor series converge to the expected solution? If so, then you will have to keep track of each sum from each iteration (step) of the loop. A couple of things - never name a local variable to have the same name as a MATLAB built in function. In this case, use taylorSeries (or something else) instead of sum. Try the following code
x = input('enter the angle: ');
x = x*pi/180; % convert to radians
n = input ('number of terms: ');
func = @(x,k)(((-1)^k)*x^(2*k)/factorial(2*k));
taylorSeries = zeros(n,1);
taylorSeries(1) = func(x,0);
for k = 1:n-1
taylorSeries(k+1) = taylorSeries(k) + func(x,k);
end
plot(taylorSeries);
Try the above and see what happens!

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