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How can you rewrite piecewise functions in terms of the unit step $u(t-a)$?

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Consider $ u(t-a) = \begin{cases} 0, & \text{if }t

How can we rewrite a function like $ f(t) = \begin{cases} \cos2t, & \text{if }0\leq t \lt 2\pi \\ 0, & \text{if }t\geq 2\pi \end{cases} $ in terms of the unit step function? My textbook writes this particular example as $f(t) = [1-u(t-2\pi)]\cos2t$, but I don't understand how this was formulated nor how I can formulate other piecewise functions in terms of the unit step similarly.

algebra-precalculus ordinary-differential-equations
asked 2012-12-11
user id:51959
270
33gold badges 66silver badges 1818bronze badges

1 Answers 1

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Consider the function $f(a,b) = u(t-a)-u(t-b); a>b$. This function is 1 in $[a,b)$ and 0 elsewhere. So, suppose you want to write $g(x) = \begin{cases} g_1(x), & \text{if } a_1

Then, $g(x) = g_1(x)f(a_2,a_1) + g_2(x)f(a_3,a_2)+\ldots$

asked 2012-12-11
user id:48371
2k
1010silver badges 2727bronze badges
  • 0
    I was looking for a "formula" such this one for quite a while. But, I must correct you: You should change it to $f(a,b)=u(t-b)-u(t-a)$ – 2014-09-16

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