Calculus – Parabola as a Limit of Sequence of Functions

calculus

I was fooling around with the following expression:
$|x-3|+|x-2|+|x-1|+|x|+|x+1|+|x+2|+|x+3|$

the graph looks something like this:
enter image description here

similarly for y=$\sum_{i=-5}^{5} |x-i|$
enter image description here

Now if we increment by only 0.01(ie. $y= \sum_{i=-10}^{10} |x-0.01i|$ but vary i from -10 to 10 we get:
enter image description here

Now my question is , do these graphs $ approximately$ represent parabolas as the value of i gets larger and the increment (call it h) gets smaller? I think of something to do with reimann sums but my efforts till now have proved to be futile. Because this sequence of functions looks like parabolas to me. Or are they completely different like $cosh(x)$?Or maybe thereis no pattern at all and this is just a coincidence?

Best Answer

Update (As @DarkMalthorp wrote, there was a mispint)

$f(x) = \sum_{k=-n}^n |x-k|$. If we see graph of $f(x)$, then $f(0) \to \infty$. So we will use scale transform. Consider $g_n(x) =\frac{1}{n^2}{f(nx)}.$ Claim. $$g_n(x) \to g(x) =\begin{cases} 2 | x |, \ if \ |x| > 1\\ x^2 + 1, \ if \ |x| \le 1 \end{cases}, \quad n \to \infty.$$ Proof. $$ g_n(x) = \frac{1}n \sum_{k=-n}^n |x - \frac{k}n| \to \int_{-1}^1 |x - t| dt = g(x) =\begin{cases} 2 | x |, \ if \ |x| > 1\\ x^2 + 1, \ if \ |x| \le 1 \end{cases}$$

So $\frac{1}{n^2}{f(nx)} = g_n(x) \approx g(x)$ and $f(y) \approx n^2 g\big( \frac{y}n \big) $.

Addition: The idea of solution is the next one: we must choose a scaling transformation of both coordinate axes such that after it we get a function that has a finite limit

Addition2: as @Ethan Bolker mentioned, after the rescaling the finite sum is a trapezoidal approximation to the integral

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