So we have a matrix like
12,32
24,12
...
with length 2xN and another
44,32
44,19
...
with length 2xN and there is some function f(x, y) that returns z[1], z[2]. That 2 matrices that we were given represent known value pairs for x,y and z[1],z[2]. What are interpolation formulas that would help in such case?
If you solve the problem for one return value, you can find two functions f_1(x,y) and f_2(x,y) by interpolation, and compose your function as f(x, y) = [f_1(x,y), f_2(x,y)]. Just pick any method for solving the interpolation function suitable for your problem.
For the actual interpolation problem in two dimensions, there are a lot of ways you can handle this. If simple is what you require, you can go with linear interpolation. If you are OK with piecewise functions, you can go for bezier curves, or splines. Or, if data is uniform, you could get away with a simple polynomial interpolation (well, not quite trivial when in 2D, but easy enough).
EDIT: More information and some links.
A piecewise solution is possible using Bilinear interpolation (wikipedia).
For polynomial interpolation, if your data is on a grid, you can use the following algorithm (I cannot find the reference for it, it is from memory).
If the data points are on a k by l grid, rewrite your polynomial as follows:
f(x,y) = cx_1(x)*y^(k-1) + cx_2(x)*y^(k-2) + ... + cx_k(x)
Here, each coefficient cx_i(x) is also a polynomial of degree l. The first step is to find k polynomials of degree l by interpolating each row or column of the grid. When this is done, you have l coefficient sets (or, in other words, l polynomials) as interpolation points for each cx_i(x) polynomials as cx_i(x0), cx_i(x1), ..., cx_i(xl) (giving you a total of l*k points). Now, you can determine these polynomials using the above constants as the interpolation points, which give you the resulting f(x,y).
The same method is used for bezier curves or splines. The only difference is that you use control points instead of polynomial coefficients. You first get a set of splines that will generate your data points, and then you interpolate the control points of these intermediate curves to get the control points of the surface curve.
Let me add an example to clarify the above algorithm. Let's have the following data points:
0,0 => 1
0,1 => 2
1,0 => 3
1,1 => 4
We start by fitting two polynomials: one for data points (0,0) and (0,1), and another for (1, 0) and (1, 1):
f_0(x) = x + 1
f_1(x) = x + 3
Now, we interpolate in the other direction to determine the coefficients.When we read these polynomial coefficients vertically, we need two polynomials. One evaluates to 1 at both 0 and 1; and another that evaluates to 1 at 0, and 3 at 1:
cy_1(y) = 1
cy_2(y) = 2*y + 1
If we combine these into f(x,y), we get:
f(x,y) = cy_1(y)*x + cy_2(y)
= 1*x + (2*y + 1)*1
= x + 2*y + 1
Related
This question and this question both show how to split a cubic Bézier curve at a particular parameterized value 0 ≤ t ≤ 1 along the curve, composing the original curve shape from two new segments. I need to split my Bézier curve at a point along the curve whose coordinate I know, but not the parameterized value t for the point.
For example, consider Adobe Illustrator, where the user can click on a curve to add a point into the path, without affecting the shape of the path.
Assuming I find the point on the curve closest to where the user clicks, how do I calculate the control points from this? Is there a formula to split a Bézier curve given a point on the curve?
Alternatively (and less desirably), given a point on the curve, is there a way to determine the parameterized value t corresponding to that point (other than using De Casteljau's algorithm in a binary search)?
My Bézier curve happens to only be in 2D, but a great answer would include the vector math needed to apply in arbitrary dimensions.
It is possible, and perhaps simpler, to determine the parametric value of a point on the curve without using De Casteljau's algorithm, but you will have to use heuristics to find a good starting value and similarly approximate the result.
One possible, and fairly simple way is to use Newton's method such that:
tn+1 = tn - ( bx(tn) - cx ) / bx'(tn)
Where bx(t) refers to the x component of some Bezier curve in polynomial form with the control points x0, x1, x2 and x3, bx'(t) is the first derivative and cx is a point on the curve such that:
cx = bx(t) | 0 < t < 1
the coefficients of bx(t) are:
A = -x0 + 3x1 - 3x2 + x3
B = 3x0 - 6x1 + 3x2
C = -3x0 + 3x1
D = x0
and:
bx(t) = At3 + Bt2 + Ct + D,
bx'(t) = 3At2 + 2Bt + C
Now finding a good starting value to plug into Newton's method is the tricky part. For most curves which do not contain loops or cusps, you can simply use the formula:
tn = ( cx - x0 ) / ( x3 - x0 ) | x0 < x1 < x2 < x3
Now you already have:
bx(tn) ≈ cx
So applying one or more iterations of Newton's method will give a better approximation of t for cx.
Note that the Newton Raphson algorithm has quadratic convergence. In most cases a good starting value will result in negligible improvement after two iterations, i.e. less than half a pixel.
Finally it's worth noting that cubic Bezier curves have exact solutions for finding extrema via finding roots of the first derivative. So curves which are problematic can simply be subdivided at their extrema to remove loops or cusps, then better results can be obtained by analyzing the resulting section in question. Subdividing cubics in this way will satisfy the above constraint.
I am trying to generate 10,000 points from the uniform distribution on the unit disk and plot these points.
The method I am using has three steps. The first step is generating the magnitude of the point x. This point has cdf F(x) = x^2 min(x) = 0 and max(x) = 1. The second step involves generating a 2 dimensional vector (which I will call y) from the multivariate normal distribution with mu being the zero vector and sigma being the 2x2 identity matrix - MVN(0,I). Last I normalize the vector y to have length x. I have tried to code the solution in R but I do not think my answer is correct. I would really appreciate if I could be pointed in the right direction.
u = runif(10000)
x = u^2
y = mvrnorm(10000, mu=rep(0,2), Sigma=diag(2))
y_norm = (x*y)/sqrt(sum(y^2))
plot(y_norm, asp = 1)
I used the MASS package for mvrnorm. Also I have included the plot that I ended up with:
You need to compute the length of each of the rows in your y matrix, you are getting the square root of the sum of all the numbers in y, which is just scaling your multinomial by a constant. Also, you need x to be sqrt(u) rather than u^2 - this code normalises each row by its length and users sqrt(u) scaling and it looks nice and uniform:
plot(sqrt(u)*y/sqrt(y[,1]^2+y[,2]^2))
There are better ways of making uniform points on a disc, unless this is just an exercise to do it this way...
I have two positive-valued vectors x,y of the same length in R. Using plot(x, y, "l",...), gives me a continuous line plot in 2 dimensions out of my finite vectors x and y. Is there a way to compute a definite integral over some range of this line plot in R?
edit1: I've looked into the integrate function in R. I'm not sure however how to make a function out of two vectors to pass to it, as my vectors are both finite.
edit2: For some more background, The length of x and y ~ 10,000. I've written a function to find periods, [xi, xj], of abnormalities in the data I'm observing. For each of these abnormalities, I've used plot to see what's going on in these snippets of my data. Now i need to compute statistics concerning the values of the integrals in these abnormal periods, so I'm trying to get as accurate as a number as possible to match with my graphs. X is a time variable, and I've taken very fine intervals of time.
You can do the integration with integrate(). To create a function out of your vectors x and y, you need to interpolate between the values. approxfun() does exactly that.
integrate takes a function and two bounds.
approxfun takes two vectors x and y just like those you have.
So my solution would be :
integrate(approxfun(x,y), range(x)[1], range(x)[2])
The approxfun function will take 2 vectors and return a function that gives the linear interpolation between the points. This can then be passed to functions like integrate. The splinefun function will also do interpolation, but based on a spline rather than piecewise linear.
In the piecewise linear case the integral will just be the sum of the trapezoids, it may be faster/simpler to just sum the areas of the trapezoids (the width, difference in x's
I landed here much later. But for future visitors,
here is some code for the suggestion from
Greg Snow's answer, for piece-wise linear functions:
line_integral <- function(x, y) {
dx <- diff(x)
end <- length(y)
my <- (y[1:(end - 1)] + y[2:end]) / 2
sum(dx *my)
}
# example
x <- c(0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6)
y <- c(0, 0, 1,-2,-1, 0, 0)
plot(x,y,"l")
line_integral(x,y)
Consider the set of non-decreasing surjective (onto) functions from (-inf,inf) to [0,1].
(Typical CDFs satisfy this property.)
In other words, for any real number x, 0 <= f(x) <= 1.
The logistic function is perhaps the most well-known example.
We are now given some constraints in the form of a list of x-values and for each x-value, a pair of y-values that the function must lie between.
We can represent that as a list of {x,ymin,ymax} triples such as
constraints = {{0, 0, 0}, {1, 0.00311936, 0.00416369}, {2, 0.0847077, 0.109064},
{3, 0.272142, 0.354692}, {4, 0.53198, 0.646113}, {5, 0.623413, 0.743102},
{6, 0.744714, 0.905966}}
Graphically that looks like this:
(source: yootles.com)
We now seek a curve that respects those constraints.
For example:
(source: yootles.com)
Let's first try a simple interpolation through the midpoints of the constraints:
mids = ({#1, Mean[{#2,#3}]}&) ### constraints
f = Interpolation[mids, InterpolationOrder->0]
Plotted, f looks like this:
(source: yootles.com)
That function is not surjective. Also, we'd like it to be smoother.
We can increase the interpolation order but now it violates the constraint that its range is [0,1]:
(source: yootles.com)
The goal, then, is to find the smoothest function that satisfies the constraints:
Non-decreasing.
Tends to 0 as x approaches negative infinity and tends to 1 as x approaches infinity.
Passes through a given list of y-error-bars.
The first example I plotted above seems to be a good candidate but I did that with Mathematica's FindFit function assuming a lognormal CDF.
That works well in this specific example but in general there need not be a lognormal CDF that satisfies the constraints.
I don't think you've specified enough criteria to make the desired CDF unique.
If the only criteria that must hold is:
CDF must be "fairly smooth" (see below)
CDF must be non-decreasing
CDF must pass through the "error bar" y-intervals
CDF must tend toward 0 as x --> -Infinity
CDF must tend toward 1 as x --> Infinity.
then perhaps you could use Monotone Cubic Interpolation.
This will give you a C^2 (twice continously differentiable) function which,
unlike cubic splines, is guaranteed to be monotone when given monotone data.
This leaves open the question, exactly what data should you use to generate the
monotone cubic interpolation. If you take the center point (mean) of each error
bar, are you guaranteed that the resulting data points are monotonically
increasing? If not, you might as well make some arbitrary choice to guarantee
that the points you select are monotonically increasing (because the criteria does not force our solution to be unique).
Now what to do about the last data point? Is there an X which is guaranteed to
be larger than any x in the constraints data set? Perhaps you can again make an
arbitrary choice of convenience and pick some very large X and put (X,1) as the
final data point.
Comment 1: Your problem can be broken into 2 sub-problems:
Given exact points (x_i,y_i) through which the CDF must pass, how do you generate CDF? I suspect there are infinitely many possible solutions, even with the infinite-smoothness constraint.
Given y-errorbars, how should you pick (x_i,y_i)? Again, there infinitely many possible solutions. Some additional criteria may need to be added to force a unique choice. Additional criteria would also probably make the problem even harder than it currently is.
Comment 2: Here is a way to use monotonic cubic interpolation, and satisfy criteria 4 and 5:
The monotonic cubic interpolation (let's call it f) maps R --> R.
Let CDF(x) = exp(-exp(f(x))). Then CDF: R --> (0,1). If we could find the appropriate f, then by defining CDF this way, we could satisfy criteria 4 and 5.
To find f, transform the CDF constraints (x_0,y_0),...,(x_n,y_n) using the transformation xhat_i = x_i, yhat_i = log(-log(y_i)). This is the inverse of the CDF transformation. If the y_i's were increasing, then the yhat_i's are decreasing.
Now apply monotone cubic interpolation to the (x_hat,y_hat) data points to generate f. Then finally, define CDF(x) = exp(-exp(f(x))). This will be a monotonically increasing function from R --> (0,1), which passes through the points (x_i,y_i).
This, I think, satisfies all the criteria 2--5. Criteria 1 is somewhat satisfied, though there certainly could exist smoother solutions.
I have found a solution that gives reasonable results for a variety of inputs.
I start by fitting a model -- once to the low ends of the constraints, and again to the high ends.
I'll refer to the mean of these two fitted functions as the "ideal function".
I use this ideal function to extrapolate to the left and to the right of where the constraints end, as well as to interpolate between any gaps in the constraints.
I compute values for the ideal function at regular intervals, including all the constraints, from where the function is nearly zero on the left to where it's nearly one on the right.
At the constraints, I clip these values as necessary to satisfy the constraints.
Finally, I construct an interpolating function that goes through these values.
My Mathematica implementation follows.
First, a couple helper functions:
(* Distance from x to the nearest member of list l. *)
listdist[x_, l_List] := Min[Abs[x - #] & /# l]
(* Return a value x for the variable var such that expr/.var->x is at least (or
at most, if dir is -1) t. *)
invertish[expr_, var_, t_, dir_:1] := Module[{x = dir},
While[dir*(expr /. var -> x) < dir*t, x *= 2];
x]
And here's the main function:
(* Return a non-decreasing interpolating function that maps from the
reals to [0,1] and that is as close as possible to expr[var] without
violating the given constraints (a list of {x,ymin,ymax} triples).
The model, expr, will have free parameters, params, so first do a
model fit to choose the parameters to satisfy the constraints as well
as possible. *)
cfit[constraints_, expr_, params_, var_] :=
Block[{xlist,bots,tops,loparams,hiparams,lofit,hifit,xmin,xmax,gap,aug,bests},
xlist = First /# constraints;
bots = Most /# constraints; (* bottom points of the constraints *)
tops = constraints /. {x_, _, ymax_} -> {x, ymax};
(* fit a model to the lower bounds of the constraints, and
to the upper bounds *)
loparams = FindFit[bots, expr, params, var];
hiparams = FindFit[tops, expr, params, var];
lofit[z_] = (expr /. loparams /. var -> z);
hifit[z_] = (expr /. hiparams /. var -> z);
(* find x-values where the fitted function is very close to 0 and to 1 *)
{xmin, xmax} = {
Min#Append[xlist, invertish[expr /. hiparams, var, 10^-6, -1]],
Max#Append[xlist, invertish[expr /. loparams, var, 1-10^-6]]};
(* the smallest gap between x-values in constraints *)
gap = Min[(#2 - #1 &) ### Partition[Sort[xlist], 2, 1]];
(* augment the constraints to fill in any gaps and extrapolate so there are
constraints everywhere from where the function is almost 0 to where it's
almost 1 *)
aug = SortBy[Join[constraints, Select[Table[{x, lofit[x], hifit[x]},
{x, xmin,xmax, gap}],
listdist[#[[1]],xlist]>gap&]], First];
(* pick a y-value from each constraint that is as close as possible to
the mean of lofit and hifit *)
bests = ({#1, Clip[(lofit[#1] + hifit[#1])/2, {#2, #3}]} &) ### aug;
Interpolation[bests, InterpolationOrder -> 3]]
For example, we can fit to a lognormal, normal, or logistic function:
g1 = cfit[constraints, CDF[LogNormalDistribution[mu,sigma], z], {mu,sigma}, z]
g2 = cfit[constraints, CDF[NormalDistribution[mu,sigma], z], {mu,sigma}, z]
g3 = cfit[constraints, 1/(1 + c*Exp[-k*z]), {c,k}, z]
Here's what those look like for my original list of example constraints:
(source: yootles.com)
The normal and logistic are nearly on top of each other and the lognormal is the blue curve.
These are not quite perfect.
In particular, they aren't quite monotone.
Here's a plot of the derivatives:
Plot[{g1'[x], g2'[x], g3'[x]}, {x, 0, 10}]
(source: yootles.com)
That reveals some lack of smoothness as well as the slight non-monotonicity near zero.
I welcome improvements on this solution!
You can try to fit a Bezier curve through the midpoints. Specifically I think you want a C2 continuous curve.
Is there a way, given a set of values (x,f(x)), to find the polynomial of a given degree that best fits the data?
I know polynomial interpolation, which is for finding a polynomial of degree n given n+1 data points, but here there are a large number of values and we want to find a low-degree polynomial (find best linear fit, best quadratic, best cubic, etc.). It might be related to least squares...
More generally, I would like to know the answer when we have a multivariate function -- points like (x,y,f(x,y)), say -- and want to find the best polynomial (p(x,y)) of a given degree in the variables. (Specifically a polynomial, not splines or Fourier series.)
Both theory and code/libraries (preferably in Python, but any language is okay) would be useful.
Thanks for everyone's replies. Here is another attempt at summarizing them. Pardon if I say too many "obvious" things: I knew nothing about least squares before, so everything was new to me.
NOT polynomial interpolation
Polynomial interpolation is fitting a polynomial of degree n given n+1 data points, e.g. finding a cubic that passes exactly through four given points. As said in the question, this was not want I wanted—I had a lot of points and wanted a small-degree polynomial (which will only approximately fit, unless we've been lucky)—but since some of the answers insisted on talking about it, I should mention them :) Lagrange polynomial, Vandermonde matrix, etc.
What is least-squares?
"Least squares" is a particular definition/criterion/"metric" of "how well" a polynomial fits. (There are others, but this is simplest.) Say you are trying to fit a polynomial
p(x,y) = a + bx + cy + dx2 + ey2 + fxy
to some given data points (xi,yi,Zi) (where "Zi" was "f(xi,yi)" in the question). With least-squares the problem is to find the "best" coefficients (a,b,c,d,e,f), such that what is minimized (kept "least") is the "sum of squared residuals", namely
S = ∑i (a + bxi + cyi + dxi2 + eyi2 + fxiyi - Zi)2
Theory
The important idea is that if you look at S as a function of (a,b,c,d,e,f), then S is minimized at a point at which its gradient is 0. This means that for example ∂S/∂f=0, i.e. that
∑i2(a + … + fxiyi - Zi)xiyi = 0
and similar equations for a, b, c, d, e.
Note that these are just linear equations in a…f. So we can solve them with Gaussian elimination or any of the usual methods.
This is still called "linear least squares", because although the function we wanted was a quadratic polynomial, it is still linear in the parameters (a,b,c,d,e,f). Note that the same thing works when we want p(x,y) to be any "linear combination" of arbitrary functions fj, instead of just a polynomial (= "linear combination of monomials").
Code
For the univariate case (when there is only variable x — the fj are monomials xj), there is Numpy's polyfit:
>>> import numpy
>>> xs = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> ys = [1.1, 3.9, 11.2, 21.5, 34.8, 51, 70.2, 92.3, 117.4, 145.5]
>>> p = numpy.poly1d(numpy.polyfit(xs, ys, deg=2))
>>> print p
2
1.517 x + 2.483 x + 0.4927
For the multivariate case, or linear least squares in general, there is SciPy. As explained in its documentation, it takes a matrix A of the values fj(xi). (The theory is that it finds the Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse of A.) With our above example involving (xi,yi,Zi), fitting a polynomial means the fj are the monomials x()y(). The following finds the best quadratic (or best polynomial of any other degree, if you change the "degree = 2" line):
from scipy import linalg
import random
n = 20
x = [100*random.random() for i in range(n)]
y = [100*random.random() for i in range(n)]
Z = [(x[i]+y[i])**2 + 0.01*random.random() for i in range(n)]
degree = 2
A = []
for i in range(n):
A.append([])
for xd in range(degree+1):
for yd in range(degree+1-xd):
A[i].append((x[i]**xd)*(y[i]**yd)) #f_j(x_i)
c,_,_,_ = linalg.lstsq(A,Z)
j = 0
for xd in range(0,degree+1):
for yd in range(0,degree+1-xd):
print " + (%.2f)x^%dy^%d" % (c[j], xd, yd),
j += 1
prints
+ (0.01)x^0y^0 + (-0.00)x^0y^1 + (1.00)x^0y^2 + (-0.00)x^1y^0 + (2.00)x^1y^1 + (1.00)x^2y^0
so it has discovered that the polynomial is x2+2xy+y2+0.01. [The last term is sometimes -0.01 and sometimes 0, which is to be expected because of the random noise we added.]
Alternatives to Python+Numpy/Scipy are R and Computer Algebra Systems: Sage, Mathematica, Matlab, Maple. Even Excel might be able to do it. Numerical Recipes discusses methods to implement it ourselves (in C, Fortran).
Concerns
It is strongly influenced by how the points are chosen. When I had x=y=range(20) instead of the random points, it always produced 1.33x2+1.33xy+1.33y2, which was puzzling... until I realised that because I always had x[i]=y[i], the polynomials were the same: x2+2xy+y2 = 4x2 = (4/3)(x2+xy+y2). So the moral is that it is important to choose the points carefully to get the "right" polynomial. (If you can chose, you should choose Chebyshev nodes for polynomial interpolation; not sure if the same is true for least squares as well.)
Overfitting: higher-degree polynomials can always fit the data better. If you change the degree to 3 or 4 or 5, it still mostly recognizes the same quadratic polynomial (coefficients are 0 for higher-degree terms) but for larger degrees, it starts fitting higher-degree polynomials. But even with degree 6, taking larger n (more data points instead of 20, say 200) still fits the quadratic polynomial. So the moral is to avoid overfitting, for which it might help to take as many data points as possible.
There might be issues of numerical stability I don't fully understand.
If you don't need a polynomial, you can obtain better fits with other kinds of functions, e.g. splines (piecewise polynomials).
Yes, the way this is typically done is by using least squares. There are other ways of specifying how well a polynomial fits, but the theory is simplest for least squares. The general theory is called linear regression.
Your best bet is probably to start with Numerical Recipes.
R is free and will do everything you want and more, but it has a big learning curve.
If you have access to Mathematica, you can use the Fit function to do a least squares fit. I imagine Matlab and its open source counterpart Octave have a similar function.
For (x, f(x)) case:
import numpy
x = numpy.arange(10)
y = x**2
coeffs = numpy.polyfit(x, y, deg=2)
poly = numpy.poly1d(coeffs)
print poly
yp = numpy.polyval(poly, x)
print (yp-y)
Bare in mind that a polynomial of higher degree ALWAYS fits the data better. Polynomials of higher degree typically leads to highly improbable functions (see Occam's Razor), though (overfitting). You want to find a balance between simplicity (degree of polynomial) and fit (e.g. least square error). Quantitatively, there are tests for this, the Akaike Information Criterion or the Bayesian Information Criterion. These tests give a score which model is to be prefered.
If you want to fit the (xi, f(xi)) to an polynomial of degree n then you would set up a linear least squares problem with the data (1, xi, xi, xi^2, ..., xi^n, f(xi) ). This will return a set of coefficients (c0, c1, ..., cn) so that the best fitting polynomial is *y = c0 + c1 * x + c2 * x^2 + ... + cn * x^n.*
You can generalize this two more than one dependent variable by including powers of y and combinations of x and y in the problem.
Lagrange polynomials (as #j w posted) give you an exact fit at the points you specify, but with polynomials of degree more than say 5 or 6 you can run into numerical instability.
Least squares gives you the "best fit" polynomial with error defined as the sum of squares of the individual errors. (take the distance along the y-axis between the points you have and the function that results, square them, and sum them up) The MATLAB polyfit function does this, and with multiple return arguments, you can have it automatically take care of scaling/offset issues (e.g. if you have 100 points all between x=312.1 and 312.3, and you want a 6th degree polynomial, you're going to want to calculate u = (x-312.2)/0.1 so the u-values are distributed between -1 and +=).
NOTE that the results of least-squares fits are strongly influenced by the distribution of x-axis values. If the x-values are equally spaced, then you'll get larger errors at the ends. If you have a case where you can choose the x values and you care about the maximum deviation from your known function and an interpolating polynomial, then the use of Chebyshev polynomials will give you something that is close to the perfect minimax polynomial (which is very hard to calculate). This is discussed at some length in Numerical Recipes.
Edit: From what I gather, this all works well for functions of one variable. For multivariate functions it is likely to be much more difficult if the degree is more than, say, 2. I did find a reference on Google Books.
at college we had this book which I still find extremely useful: Conte, de Boor; elementary numerical analysis; Mc Grow Hill. The relevant paragraph is 6.2: Data Fitting.
example code comes in FORTRAN, and the listings are not very readable either, but the explanations are deep and clear at the same time. you end up understanding what you are doing, not just doing it (as is my experience of Numerical Recipes).
I usually start with Numerical Recipes but for things like this I quickly have to grab Conte-de Boor.
maybe better posting some code... it's a bit stripped down, but the most relevant parts are there. it relies on numpy, obviously!
def Tn(n, x):
if n==0:
return 1.0
elif n==1:
return float(x)
else:
return (2.0 * x * Tn(n - 1, x)) - Tn(n - 2, x)
class ChebyshevFit:
def __init__(self):
self.Tn = Memoize(Tn)
def fit(self, data, degree=None):
"""fit the data by a 'minimal squares' linear combination of chebyshev polinomials.
cfr: Conte, de Boor; elementary numerical analysis; Mc Grow Hill (6.2: Data Fitting)
"""
if degree is None:
degree = 5
data = sorted(data)
self.range = start, end = (min(data)[0], max(data)[0])
self.halfwidth = (end - start) / 2.0
vec_x = [(x - start - self.halfwidth)/self.halfwidth for (x, y) in data]
vec_f = [y for (x, y) in data]
mat_phi = [numpy.array([self.Tn(i, x) for x in vec_x]) for i in range(degree+1)]
mat_A = numpy.inner(mat_phi, mat_phi)
vec_b = numpy.inner(vec_f, mat_phi)
self.coefficients = numpy.linalg.solve(mat_A, vec_b)
self.degree = degree
def evaluate(self, x):
"""use Clenshaw algorithm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clenshaw_algorithm
"""
x = (x-self.range[0]-self.halfwidth) / self.halfwidth
b_2 = float(self.coefficients[self.degree])
b_1 = 2 * x * b_2 + float(self.coefficients[self.degree - 1])
for i in range(2, self.degree):
b_1, b_2 = 2.0 * x * b_1 + self.coefficients[self.degree - i] - b_2, b_1
else:
b_0 = x*b_1 + self.coefficients[0] - b_2
return b_0
Remember, there's a big difference between approximating the polynomial and finding an exact one.
For example, if I give you 4 points, you could
Approximate a line with a method like least squares
Approximate a parabola with a method like least squares
Find an exact cubic function through these four points.
Be sure to select the method that's right for you!
It's rather easy to scare up a quick fit using Excel's matrix functions if you know how to represent the least squares problem as a linear algebra problem. (That depends on how reliable you think Excel is as a linear algebra solver.)
The lagrange polynomial is in some sense the "simplest" interpolating polynomial that fits a given set of data points.
It is sometimes problematic because it can vary wildly between data points.