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UndeterminedCoef icients
Inthissectionwewilltakealookatthefirstmethodthatcanbeusedtofindaparticularsolutiontoa
nonhomogeneousdifferentialequation.
Oneofthemainadvantagesofthismethodisthatitreducestheproblemdowntoanalgebraproblem.The
algebracangetmessyonoccasion,butformostoftheproblemsitwillnotbeterriblydifficult.Anothernice
thingaboutthismethodisthatthecomplementarysolutionwillnotbeexplicitlyrequired,althoughaswe
willseeknowledgeofthecomplementarysolutionwillbeneededinsomecasesandsowellgenerallyfind
thataswell.
Therearetwodisadvantagestothismethod.First,itwillonlyworkforafairlysmallclassofg(t)s.The
classofg(t)sforwhichthemethodworks,doesincludesomeofthemorecommonfunctions,however,there
aremanyfunctionsoutthereforwhichundeterminedcoefficientssimplywontwork.Second,itisgenerally
onlyusefulforconstantcoefficientdifferentialequations.
Themethodisquitesimple.Allthatweneedtodoislookatg(t)andmakeaguessastotheform
ofYP(t)leavingthecoefficient(s)undetermined(andhencethenameofthemethod).Plugtheguessintothe
differentialequationandseeifwecandeterminevaluesofthecoefficients.Ifwecandeterminevaluesfor
thecoefficientsthenweguessedcorrectly,ifwecantfindvaluesforthecoefficientsthenweguessed
incorrectly.
Itsusuallyeasiertoseethismethodinactionratherthantotryanddescribeit,soletsjumpintosome
examples.
Example1Determineaparticularsolutionto
Solution
Thepointhereistofindaparticularsolution,howeverthefirstthing
thatweregoingtodoisfindthecomplementarysolutiontothis
differentialequation.Recallthatthecomplementarysolutioncomes
fromsolving,
Thecharacteristicequationforthisdifferentialequationanditsroots
are.
http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/DE/UndeterminedCoefficients.aspx 1/1