Everytime I run my code I keep getting an infinite recursion error. My code is posted below. Can you please help me figure out why it keeps giving me this error?

It flags me at the y(:, i) = x.^(i)./factorial(i); line below.

function exp = expapprox(x,n)
n = 5;
x = 1:5;
% number of iterations for loop
for i = 1:n
    y(:, i) = x.^(i)./factorial(i);
end 
exp = 1+ sum(y);
actexp = exp(x); 
plot(actexp, expapprox(x,5))
end

Answer 1

[James Tursa]

Your plot statement calls your function expapprox, so it gets into an infinite recursion. You've got another problem as well, since you create a variable named "exp" which is shadowing the MATLAB function of the same name. Pick a different variable name.

[Alison Michell]

Thank you for your help! I can change the name of the variable exp, however, is there an alternative way for me to plot the values from my expapprox function without causing the infinite recursion?

[James Tursa]

E.g., something like this:

expcumsum = 1 + cumsum(y,2);
actexp = repmat(exp(x(:)),1,n); 
figure;
plot([expcumsum;actexp]','.-');
xlabel('Number of Terms');
ylabel('exp value');
title('Taylor Series exp convergence')
grid on

The value returned from the function could be something like this:

function expvalue = expapprox(x,n)
    :
expvalue = expcumsum(:,end);