Spline Interpolation

  • George A. Anastassiou
  • Razvan A. Mezei
Part of the Springer Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics and Technology book series (SUMAT)

Abstract

Given the set of n + 1 data points,
$$\displaystyle{ \begin{array}{l|l|l|l|l} x_{0} & x_{1} & x_{2} & \ldots & x_{n} \\ \hline y_{0} & y_{1} & y_{0} & \ldots & y_{n} \end{array},\text{ with }x_{0} < x_{1} < \cdots < x_{n}, }$$
we have seen how we can obtain a polynomial function of degree (at most) n, \(p(x) = a_{n}x^{n} + a_{n-1}x^{n-1} + \cdots + a_{1}x + a_{0}\) that interpolates these points. That is:
$$\displaystyle{ p(x_{0}) = y_{0},p(x_{1}) = y_{1},\ldots,p(x_{n}) = y_{n}. }$$
This, however, has a major drawback: the polynomial can have a very high degree (up to n) and hence, the interpolating function can oscillate too much. The oscillation may be quite wild even when all the y-values of the data set given are essentially constant.

Supplementary material

330910_1_En_6_MOESM1_ESM.txt (14 kb)
Sage Code (TXT 14 kb)

References

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    Cheney, W., Kincaid, D.: Numerical Mathematics and Computing, 7th edn. Brooks/Cole: Cengage Learning, Boston (2013)Google Scholar
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    Epperson, J.F.: An Introduction to Numerical Methods and Analysis, revised edition. Wiley, New York (2007)Google Scholar
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    Stein, W.A., et al.: Sage mathematics software (Version 6.3). The Sage development team. http://www.sagemath.org (2014). Retrieved 2014
  7. 7.
    Stein, W.A.: Sage for power users. http://www.wstein.org/books/sagebook/sagebook.pdf (2012)

Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • George A. Anastassiou
    • 1
  • Razvan A. Mezei
    • 2
  1. 1.Department of Mathematical SciencesThe University of MemphisMemphisUSA
  2. 2.Mathematics and Computing SciencesLenoir-Rhyne UniversityHickoryUSA

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