Infinite family of approximations of the digamma function (Q2473206)

Let \(\textstyle \Psi(x):=\frac{\Gamma^{\prime}(x)}{\Gamma(x)}\) be the psi or digamma function. The authors construct an infinite number of approximations for \(\Psi(x)\), \(x\in (0,\infty)\), denoted as \(\{I_{a}, a\in[0,1]\}\), where \(I_{a}(x)=\ln(x+a)-\frac{1}{x}\). The functions \(I_{a}\) are shown to approximate \(\Psi(x)\) locally and asymptotically independently of \(a\in[0,1]\). It is shown that for any \(x>0\), there exists an \(a\) such that \(\Psi(x)=I_{a}(x)\). Local and global bounding error functions are found and several inequalities involving the function \(\Psi(x)\) are obtained.