Summary

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Details

I made this using the graphics programming language TikZ, Beamer and LaTeX

The plot displays the absolute error when computing the derivative of ${\displaystyle f(x)=x^{3}}$ (${\displaystyle f'(x)=3x^{2}}$) using a forward difference (of first order) and a centered difference (of second order),

${\displaystyle {\frac {f(x+h)-f(x)}{h}}-3x^{2}}$

for various values of ${\displaystyle x}$. The centered difference is for ${\displaystyle x=0.1}$ only.

The noisy negative slope is due to finite precision (64-bit IEEE754) in the computer used, and the positive slope is due to the formula error of the differentiation formula.

Licensing

I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so: I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.