Taylor Series

For a really superb video explaining how Taylor Polynomials and Taylor Series are created, you need go no further than this video by 3Blue1Brown.

$$ \sum_{n=0} ^ {\infty} \frac {f^{(n)}(a)}{n!} \, (x-a)^{n} =f(a)+\frac {f'(a)}{1!} (x-a)+ \frac{f''(a)}{2!} (x-a)^2+\frac{f'''(a)}{3!}(x-a)^3+ \cdots $$The formula above was copied from Wikipedia where all mathematical expressions are in LaTeX but enclosed within <math> ... </math> tags. While it's always good practice to create the LaTeX from scratch, it's still useful to remember that any mathematical expressions found in Wikipedia can be copied directly into Blogger.

Anyway, the main point of this post is to remind myself to watch more of 3Blue1Brown's videos. The Taylor Series video was created in May of 2017 and since then twenty more have been added. Altogether he has almost seventy videos of which I've watched sixteen. The description of the channel states that:

3Blue1Brown, by Grant Sanderson, is some combination of math and entertainment, depending on your disposition. The goal is for explanations to be driven by animations and for difficult problems to be made simple with changes in perspective. 

He can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/3blue1brown and a website at http://www.3blue1brown.com.