An average of 18 attacks on Jews in Europe since September 11

[KrazyHorse]

Would take up too much space...

Plus, it's good for students. Exercises the parts of their brains they'll need in the future.

Some of the math courses can get pretty bad with taking it too far, though. Like they'll tell you that proof is left as an exercise to the reader, and it will be a 10-page proof that was the basis for some poor sap's dissertation in the 1930s...

[Ecthy]

We did 2 taylor series in school. One for e^x and one for sin(x).

[KrazyHorse]

I've done 2 000 Taylor series in my life...

Or crappy approximations based on Taylor series. Or Laurent expansions. Or expansions in other orthonormal bases (Legendre polynomials, etc.)

[KrazyHorse]

It's amazing how complicated they can seem before you realise that you're using the same trick for all of them...

[Ecthy]

can you tell me a bit more about all that? what is a general approach for a taylor series? why do they only tell me 2 of them in school when they're so cool and I have both math and physics in advanced courses? and why is it I can't get raspberry lemonade in this region?

I demand some answers!

[KrazyHorse]

Do you know how to take derivatives?

[Ecthy]

and what is Laurent thing or that other approx?

[TCO]

How about the Bessel functions? Or the necktie functions. (Don't even know what that last one is...but one of my profs would blather on about it occasionally.)

[Ecthy]

yes I know how to take derivatives.

[TCO]

yeah what is the laurent thingie.

/me reaches for his Engine Math book.

[KrazyHorse]

The Taylor series about a point "a" for a function f(x) is:

f(x) = f(a) + f'(a)(x-a) + f''(a)(x-a)²/2 + ... + f⁽ⁿ⁾(a)(x-a)ⁿ/n! + ...

Offer void where restricted

[TCO]

It's in there. The laurent thingie. For series expansion at a point that is a singularity.

[TCO]

What book did you use for Mathematical physics after diff Eq's?

[KrazyHorse]

How about the Bessel functions? Or the necktie functions. (Don't even know what that last one is...but one of my profs would blather on about it occasionally.)

I hate Bessel functions. IIRC, they are an orthonormal basis for most functions (all except "weird" ones) so you should be able to do it with them too...

Laurent expansion was something we used quite a bit during complex analysis. IIRC, you can write any harmonic function and conglomerate of Taylor and Laurent expansions (good for different regions)...

[Ecthy]

Taylor seems to be ea