#### Implementing exponentials.

No. 112

##### The exponential $f ⁡ x = e x$
 Q: The exponential $f ⁡ x = e x$ is being defined by a power series: Equation 1. Power series definition of $f ⁡ x = e x$ $e x = 1 + x 1 1 ! + x 2 2 ! + x 3 3 ! + ... = ∑ i = 0 ∞ x i i !$ Implement a class method double exp(double) inside a class Math choosing a package of your choice. The name clash with the Java standard class java.lang.Math is intended: You'll learn how to resolve naming conflicts. Regarding practical calculations we replace the above infinite series by a limited one. So the number of terms to be considered will become a parameter which shall be configurable. Continue the implementation of the following skeleton: Figure 294. An implementation sketch for the exponential public class Math { ... /** * @param seriesLimit The last term's index of a power series to be included, */ public static void setSeriesLimit(int seriesLimit) {...} /** * Approximating the natural exponential function by a finite * number of terms from the corresponding power series. * * A power series implementation has to be finite since an * infinite number of terms requires infinite execution time. * * The number of terms to be considered can be set by {@link #setSeriesLimit(int)}} * * @param x * @return */ public static double exp(double x) {...} } Compare your results using seriesLimit=8 terms and the corresponding values from the professional implementation java.lang.Math.exp by calculating $e -3$, $e -2$, $e 1$, $e 2$ and $e 3$. What do you observe? Can you explain this result? Do not forget to provide suitable Javadoc comments and check the generated HTML documentation for correctness. Hints: You should only use basic arithmetic operations like +, - * and /. Do not use Math.pow(double a, double b) and friends! Their implementations use power series expansions as well and are designed for a different purpose like having fractional exponent values. The power series' elements may be obtained in a recursive fashion like e.g.: $x 3 3 ! = x 3 ⁢ x 2 2 !$ A: Maven module source code available at sub directory P/Sd1/math/V1 below lecture notes' source code root, see hints regarding import. Online browsing of API and implementation. Regarding the finite number of terms we provide a class variable ❶ having default value of 5 corresponding to just the first 1 + 5 = 6 terms: $e x ≈ 1 + x 1 1 ! + ... + x 5 5 !$ We also provide a corresponding setter method ❷ enabling users of our class to choose a different value: public class Math { static int seriesLimit = 5; ❶ /** * * @param seriesLimit The last term's index of a power series to be included, * {@link }}. */ public static void setSeriesLimit(int seriesLimit) { ❷ Math.seriesLimit = seriesLimit; } ...Calculating values by a finite series requires a loop: public static double exp(double x) { double currentTerm = 1., // the first (i == 0) term x^0/0! sum = currentTerm; // initialize to the power series' first term for (int i = 1; i <= seriesLimit; i++) { // i = 0 has already been completed. currentTerm *= x / i; sum += currentTerm; } return sum; }You may also view the Javadoc and the implementation of double Math.exp(double). We may use the subsequent code snippet for testing and comparing our implementation: Math.setSeriesLimit(6); double byPowerSeries = Math.exp(1.); System.out.println("e^1=" + byPowerSeries + ", difference=" + (byPowerSeries - java.lang.Math.exp(1.))); byPowerSeries = Math.exp(2.); System.out.println("e^2=" + byPowerSeries + ", difference=" + (byPowerSeries - java.lang.Math.exp(2.))); byPowerSeries = Math.exp(3.); System.out.println("e^3=" + byPowerSeries + ", difference=" + (byPowerSeries - java.lang.Math.exp(3.)));In comparison with a professional implementation we have the following results: e^1=2.7180555555555554, difference=-2.262729034896438E-4 e^2=7.355555555555555, difference=-0.033500543375095226 e^3=19.412499999999998, difference=-0.67303692318767Our implementation based on just 6 terms is quite good for small values of x. Larger values however exhibit growing differences. This is due to the fact that our approximation is in fact just a polynomial of degree 6: The plots show a particularly bad approximation for negative values. But for larger values outside the above scope the exponential will quickly diverge from its polynomial approximation as well.