3 ms·
I don't think Taylor series (or, for that matter, Fourier series) will ever stop seeming magical to me. It seems to defy all common sense that things could rea
by crazygringo 2y ago
I don't think Taylor series (or, for that matter, Fourier series) will ever stop seeming magical to me.
It seems to defy all common sense that things could really add up and cancel each other out that perfectly.
I understand all the intuition behind them. But they still feel like magic.
- rhelz 2y agoYou wonder why we don’t have statues of him in college towns.
- seanhunter 2y agoHe has a lunar crater[1] named after him, which is a bit better than a statue imo. [1] https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/5889 https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/5889
- empath75 2y agoFor polynomials, it's kind of trivial that taylor series work. It's sort of magical in the case of sine and cosine and the exponential function, but that's more a case, i think, of the "magical" properties of those functions than the taylor series. In the general case, taylor series only approximate a function around a point and it's not even guaranteed to do it very well or very far from that point.
- rini17 2y ago> taylor series only approximate a function around a point and it's not even guaranteed to do it very well or very far from that point. Half of the the article is mitigating that.