[Math] Error formula for Composite Trapezoidal Rule

approximate integrationnumerical methods

My textbook gives me the error term for the Composite Trapezoidal Rule as this:

$-\frac{b-a}{12}h^2f''(\mu)$, where $\mu \in(a,b)$ and $f \in C^2 [a,b]$

I am using MatLab to produce approximations with the Composite Trapezoidal Rule for $\int_0^{0.99} \frac{1}{\sqrt{1-x^2}}{\rm d}x$ with the intervals $h = 0.01, 0.005, 0.0025, 0.00125, 0.000625$

Below is my table of the approximations by my code and the absolute error for each interval:

 ....h............S(h)...........abs. err...
 0.010000    1.432052842622   0.002795989152
 0.005000    1.429980957924   0.000724104453
 0.002500    1.429439827337   0.000182973867
 0.001250    1.429302728001   0.000045874530
 0.000625    1.429268330467   0.000011476997

Evaluating the error with the error formula, however, gives me a very different number than what my code is spitting out. For example, evaluating the error term for $h = 0.01, a = 0, b = 0.99$, I end up with $0.437161725$. Should my approximation of the error be that off? Am I not using the error term properly?

Best Answer

You should be careful with this expression:

$$ {\rm err} = -\frac{b-a}{12}h^2f''(\mu) \tag{1} $$

The meaning is: there is a point $\mu \in (a,b)$ such that the error is given by this expression. To show this is true I calculate $S(h)$ for various values of $h$ and the absolute error $\epsilon$. I then find the value of $\mu$ guaranteed by Eq. (1), that is, the value of $\mu$ such that ${\rm err} = \epsilon$

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