HP 50g finding the nth derivative Jonathan Vogel Junior Member Posts: 5 Threads: 2 Joined: Mar 2008 03-08-2008, 04:05 PM Is there a way I can find the nth derivative of a function using the hp 50g? Mark W Paris Junior Member Posts: 26 Threads: 3 Joined: Jul 2007 03-10-2008, 10:56 AM Hi Jonathan -- I don't know if there's a key-sequence that'll do it for you, but I tend to doubt it. I checked the manual and didn't find any f^{(n)} function. You can write a short program using matrix functions to do it. Suppose you want the n-th derivative. The brute force way of doing this is to evaluate the function at n+1 points and take the finite differences dividing out (for n>0) some appropriate interval. Eg. f^{(1)}(x) = \frac{f(h)-f(-h)}{2h} (LaTeX form - should be pretty obvious) The error in this equation is O(h^2) since we've taken the symmetric diffrence. Now if we truncate the Taylor expansion for a function f(x) about a point f(x_0) at order n f(x)-f(x_0)=\sum_{m=1}^n f^{(m)}(x_0) x^m/m! we can write a linear system of equations for the derivatives f^{(m)} for m>0 in terms of the differences of the function evaluated at x_0 and multiples of some small number h as f^{(m)}(x_0) = \sum_{j=1}^n A^{-1}_{mj} [f_j-f(x_0)] where f_j = f(x=j*h) and A^{-1} is the inverse of the matrix A_{jm} = (j*h)^m/m! The method is accurate to O(h^(n-j)) for the j-th derivative. There are some tricks you can play to improve the accuracy of the algorithm, like taking symmetric intervals about x_0, ie. x=+/-h, x=+/-2h, x=+/-3h, ... but the idea is the same. Of course, as always, you should check any math people tell you yourself. Marcus von Cube, Germany Posting Freak Posts: 3,283 Threads: 104 Joined: Jul 2005 03-10-2008, 12:34 PM Why not do it symbolically in RPL? << -> fn var n << fn 1 n START var d NEXT EVAL >> >> 'dN' STO  It can be used on the stack or algebraically like this: 'dN(X^4,X,3)' EVAL  The latter leads to 24*X as a result. Marcus Edited: 10 Mar 2008, 4:13 p.m. after one or more responses were posted Mark W Paris Junior Member Posts: 26 Threads: 3 Joined: Jul 2007 03-10-2008, 12:46 PM Much nicer. Guess I should learn RPL. « Next Oldest | Next Newest »

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