On 14-Jul-10 10:57:02, David Bickel wrote: > What are some reliable R functions that can compute the value of a > convergent series? > > David
Please give an example of a definition (as you would specify it to an R function) of a "convergent series" that you want to compute! Your query is about as general as could possibly be, and cannot be presented to R as it stands, since a convergent series is an infinite sequence of terms which could be anything so long as the series converges. There are already many R functions -- such as sin(), exp() -- which compute values for specific convergent series, though often by special methods which do not work through the series of terms. Presumably a general series would be specified in terms of some rule which defines the nth term in terms of the (n-1)th, and possibly preceding, terms. Once such a specification has been given, an R function can be written. Are you thinking of something on the lines of sersum <- function(x,fun1,fun) where fun1(x) would be a user-supplied function which computes the first term as a function of x, and fun(x,n,tn) a user-supplied function which computes term n in terms of tn=term (n-1), and n, for n>1? E.g. for the exponential series, fun1 <- function(x) 1 fun <- function(x,n,tn) tn*x/n Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 14-Jul-10 Time: 12:18:22 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.