Answer to Quiz 9 Fri 15 Mar 2002

Apply Richardson extrapolation to compute a third-order approximation for the derivative of arctan(x) at x = 0.3. Use forward differences in your first-order approximation.

1. Write all formulas symbolically in terms of f, x, h, and r:

The first column with first-order (i.e.: O(h)) approximations is:

  f(x+h) - f(x)
 ---------------     = Df(x,h)
         h

  f(x+r*h) - f(x)
 -----------------   = Df(x,r*h)
         r*h

  f(x+r^2*h) - f(x)
 ------------------- = Df(x,r^2*h)
         r^2*h
We extrapolate to obtain second-order (i.e.: O(h^2)) approximations:
  Df(x,r*h) - Df(x,h)*r
 -----------------------     = Df(x,h,r*h)
          1 - r

  Df(x,r^2*h) - Df(x,r*h)*r
 --------------------------- = Df(x,r*h,r^2*h)
            1 - r
Extrapolating once more, we obtain the third column with the formula for the third-order (i.e.: O(h^3)) approximation:
  Df(x,r*h,r^2*h) - Df(x,h,r*h)*r^2
 ----------------------------------- = Df(x,h,r*h,r^2*h)
                1 - r^2

2. Evaluate all the formulas above numerically, f = arctan, x = 0.3, h = 0.1, r = 0.5. Show the intermediate results with six decimal places. Continue the calculations with the intermediate rounded results.

   0.890496

   0.904360     0.918224

   0.911004     0.917648     0.917456