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The original use of interpolation polynomials was to approximate values of important transcendental functions such as natural logarithm and trigonometric functions.Starting with a few accurately computed data points, the corresponding interpolation polynomial will approximate the function at an arbitrary nearby point.
Low-order polynomials tend to be smooth and high order polynomial curves tend to be "lumpy". To define this more precisely, the maximum number of inflection points possible in a polynomial curve is n-2, where n is the order of the polynomial equation. An inflection point is a location on the curve where it switches from a positive radius to ...
Furthermore, polynomial interpolation may exhibit oscillatory artifacts, especially at the end points (see Runge's phenomenon). Polynomial interpolation can estimate local maxima and minima that are outside the range of the samples, unlike linear interpolation. For example, the interpolant above has a local maximum at x ≈ 1.566, f(x) ≈ 1. ...
Lagrange and other interpolation at equally spaced points, as in the example above, yield a polynomial oscillating above and below the true function. This behaviour tends to grow with the number of points, leading to a divergence known as Runge's phenomenon ; the problem may be eliminated by choosing interpolation points at Chebyshev nodes .
A polynomial function is one that has the form = + + + + + where n is a non-negative integer that defines the degree of the polynomial. A polynomial with a degree of 0 is simply a constant function; with a degree of 1 is a line; with a degree of 2 is a quadratic; with a degree of 3 is a cubic, and so on.
In the mathematical field of numerical analysis, spline interpolation is a form of interpolation where the interpolant is a special type of piecewise polynomial called a spline. That is, instead of fitting a single, high-degree polynomial to all of the values at once, spline interpolation fits low-degree polynomials to small subsets of the ...
However, the evaluation and summation steps are often combined in clever ways. For example, Bernstein polynomials are a basis for polynomials that can be evaluated in linear combinations efficiently using special recurrence relations. This is the essence of De Casteljau's algorithm, which features in Bézier curves and Bézier splines).
Given the two red points, the blue line is the linear interpolant between the points, and the value y at x may be found by linear interpolation. In mathematics, linear interpolation is a method of curve fitting using linear polynomials to construct new data points within the range of a discrete set of known data points.