Power Series — sicmutils 0.14.0

Power Series

Power series are often needed in mathematical computations. There are a few primitive power series, and new power series can be formed by operations on existing power series. If <p> is an expression denoting a power series, then:

(series/series? <any>)    ;;=> <boolean>
(kind <p>)                ;;=> :sicmutils.series/series

Series can be constructed in a variety of ways. If one has a procedure that implements the general form of a coefficient then this gives the most direct method:

For example, the n-th coefficient of the power series for the exponential function is 1/n!. We can write this as

(series/generate (fn [n] (/ 1 (factorial n))))

Sometimes we have a finite number of coefficients and we want to make a series with those given coefficients (assuming zeros for all higher-order coefficients). We can do this with the extensional constructor. Thus:

(series 1 2 3 4 5)

is the series whose first coefficients are the arguments given.

There are some nice initial series:

series/zero

is the series of all zero coefficients.

series/one

is the series of all zero coefficients except for the first (constant), which is one.

(constant-series c)

is the series of all zero coefficients except for the first (constant), which is the given constant.

((binomial-series a) x)

Returns a series containing the coefficients of the expansion of (1+x)^a.

In addition, we provide the following initial series:

exp-series, cos-series, sin-series, tan-series, sec-series,
asin-series, acos-series, atan-series, acot-series,
sinh-series, cosh-series, tanh-series, asinh-series, atanh-series,
log1+x-series, log1-x-series,
fib-series, catalan-series

Series can also be formed by processes such as exponentiation of an operator or a square matrix.

For example, if f is any function of one argument, and if x and dx are numerical expressions, then this expression denotes the Taylor expansion of f around x.

(let [f (literal-function 'f)]
  (((exp (* 'dx D)) f) 'x))

;; (f x)
;; (* dx ((D f) x))
;; (* 1/2 (expt dx 2) (((expt D 2) f) x))
;; (* 1/6 (expt dx 3) (((expt D 3) f) x))
;; (* 1/24 (expt dx 4) (((expt D 4) f) x))
;; (* 1/120 (expt dx 5) (((expt D 5) f) x))
;; (* 1/720 (expt dx 6) (((expt D 6) f) x))
;; ...

We often want to show a few (n) terms of a series:

(seq:print <n> <p>)

;; pretty-printing version
(seq:pprint <n> <p>)

For example, to show eight coefficients of the cosine series we might write:

(seq:print 8 (((exp D) cos) 0))
;; 1.0
;; 0
;; -1/2
;; 0
;; 1/24
;; 0
;; -1/720
;; 0

We can make the sequence of partial sums of a series. The sequence is a stream, not a series.

(seq:print 10 (partial-sums (((exp D) cos) 0.)))
1.
1.
.5
.5
.5416666666666666
.5416666666666666
.5402777777777777
.5402777777777777
.5403025793650793
.5403025793650793

Note that the sequence of partial sums approaches (cos 1).

(cos 1)
;;=> .5403023058681398

In addition to the special operations for series, the following generic operations are defined for series:

negate, invert, +, -, *, /, expt

sicmutils.series has many more operations than this that aren’t registered in the generic system. See the sicmutils.series namespace for a Literate Programming-style exposition of the capabilities SICMUtils affords for series and power series.