In mathematics, a reflection formula or reflection relation for a function f is a relationship between f(a − x) and f(x). It is a special case of a functional equation, and it is very common in the literature to use the term "functional equation" when "reflection formula" is meant.
Reflection formulas are useful for numerical computation of special functions. In effect, an approximation that has greater accuracy or only converges on one side of a reflection point (typically in the positive half of the complex plane) can be employed for all arguments.
Read more about Reflection Formula: Known Formulae
Famous quotes containing the words reflection and/or formula:
“What chiefly distinguishes the daily press of the United States from the press of all other countries is not its lack of truthfulness or even its lack of dignity and honor, for these deficiencies are common to the newspapers everywhere, but its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion. It is, in the true sense, never well-informed.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“For the myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)