Due to the subtractive cancellation in the expression for \( f'' \) there is a pronounced detoriation in accuracy as \( h \) is made smaller and smaller.

It is instructive in this analysis to rewrite the numerator of the computed derivative as $$ (f_h -f_0) +(f_{-h}-f_0)=(e^{x+h}-e^{x}) + (e^{x-h}-e^{x}), $$ as $$ (f_h -f_0) +(f_{-h}-f_0)=e^x(e^{h}+e^{-h}-2), $$ since it is the difference \( (e^{h}+e^{-h}-2) \) which causes the loss of precision.