[SOLVED] (Methods)Parameters v Undetermined Coefficients

hils0005

Can anyone tell me why I would use one technique over the other? It seems as though undetermined Coef. is much easier to do but I suppose that comes with limitations???

rock.freak667

Well if you can guess the particular integral of a Diff eq'n then method of undetermined coefficients will work and the pi's you can usually guess are usually [itex]e^{ax},sinax,cosax,sinax+cosax,etc.[/itex]. But if you have tanx or [itex]\frac{1}{1+x}[/itex] then you'll need to use variation of parameters to solve.

hils0005

Thanks for the explanation