Thread: Very new to c programming and need help

Hi,

I am taking a required c programming class at school, and I feel like the projects are way over my head. This is only the second project, and I am unsure of how to start it. I'm not asking for anyone to write the code for me. I just need some help starting the project.

The objective is to write a program based on the Taylor series of expansion.

The first part of the project is:

Develop a function in C that calculates the error between an exponential function evaluated at x and the Taylor Series approximation using only the first two terms, i.e. 1+x. It should take in the value of x and return the value of the error.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

Not accounting for precision loss, it sounds like you just need to return the absolute error, i.e.

Code:

double error = abs(1+x - exp(x))

abs and exp are standard math functions found in math.h.

This is what I have so far, but I'm not sure where to go from here:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>

int main(void)
{
	int x;
	double error = abs(1+x - exp(x));
	
	printf("Enter a value for x \n");
	scanf("%d", &x);
	
	getchar();	
	
	return 0;
}

Okay I changed it around a little bit...

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>

int main(void) {
	int x;
	char input1 = 'E';
	double error;
	
	printf("\n\nEnter E to calculate error\n");
	printf("Enter Q to quit program\n");
	scanf("%c", &input1);
	
	while( input1 != 'Q' )
	{
		if ( input1 == 'E' )
		{

			printf("\nEnter a value for x: ");
			scanf("%d", &x);
	
			error = abs(1+x - exp(x));
			printf("error is: %lf\n\n", error);
		}
		else
		{
			printf( "\nERROR! Please try again!\n\n" );
		}
	}

	return 0;
}

Let me know if this makes sense.

Thanks for the help!!