On: Identities in Higher Calculus and Special Function...

[commandlinefan]

> encountering Taylor and Maclaurin series in Calc I, and thinking “oh, that’s a cute trick.” ... somebody had actually put the stuff to good use

Aren't Taylor series expansions how calculators compute sine and cosine values?

[melissalobos → commandlinefan]

Not usually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORDIC is a bit more common, or if they are using an approximation, some form of min-max rational function approximation.

[raydiatian → commandlinefan]

Oh I mean you could close your eyes and throw a dart at the map of mathematics and find any clever application thanks to <<insert-name-here>>’s ingenuity. I’m just saying that I had, as of yet, not known about or encountered a significant use of Maclaurin series.