E. Carpenter's proof of Taylor's theorem

Abstract

The idea of the following proof was communicated to me some years ago by Mr Edward Carpenter of Millthorpe, Derbyshire, formerly Fellow of Trinity Half, Cambridge; who remarked that it seemed to afford a demonstration of Taylor's Theorem which came very naturally and directly from the definition of a differential coefficient. The chief difficulty seemed to arise in dealing with the negligible small quantities which are produced in great numbers. However, I found it not difficult to complete the proof for the case when all the successive differential coefficients of f(x) are finite and continuous.