[Math] Error Bounds with Trapezoidal Formula

calculusderivativesintegration

I know there are some posts about the same thing but I am unable to do my specific question or at least, I don't think I'm doing it the right way.

The question asks me to use the Trapezoidal Error bound formula to determine N so that if $\int^{10}_0e^{-2x}dx$ is approximated using the trapezoidal rule with N subintervals, the error is guaranteed to be less than $10^{-4}$.

So using the error bound formula…

$$E_T\le \frac{K(b-a)^3}{12n^2}$$

So apparently I have to differentiate the function to the second derivative to find the maximum value of K or something like that? I dont really understand why but I just do it mechanically, so an explanation on that would really help.

$$f''(x) = 4e^{-2x}$$

But how do I find the value that makes the above function the maximum? Is that what I am supposed to do?

Once I find out how to do the above question, I can just plug in the numbers and solve the inequality correct?

Best Answer

You require $K$ such that \begin{equation} |f''(x)| \leq K \end{equation} for all $x \in [0,10]$. Fortunately your function $f''$ is positive and strictly decreasing, so \begin{equation} K = f''(0) = 4 \end{equation} is a good choice. Then you can simple determine the smallest positive integer $n$ such that \begin{equation} \frac{K(b-a)^3}{n^2} \leq \tau \end{equation} where $\tau = 10^{-4}$ is your maximum acceptable error.