Search

Let $z_{1},\ldots,z_{K}$ be distinct grid points. If $f_{k,0}$ is the prescribed value of a function at the grid point $z_{k}$, and $f_{k,r}$ the prescribed value of the $r$\foreignlanguage{american}{-th} derivative, for $1\leq r\leq n_{k}-1$, the Hermite interpolant is the unique polynomial of degree $N-1$ ($N=n_{1}+\cdots+n_{K}$) which interpolates the prescribed function values and function derivatives. We obtain another derivation of a method for Hermite interpolation recently proposed by Butcher et al. {[}\emph{Numerical Algorithms, vol. 56 (2011), p. 319-347}{]}. One advantage of our derivation is that it leads to an efficient method for updating the barycentric weights. If an additional derivative is prescribed at one of the interpolation points, we show how to update the barycentric coefficients using only $\mathcal{O}\left(N\right)$ operations. Even in the context of confluent Newton series, a comparably efficient and general method to update the coefficients appears not to be known. If the method is properly implemented, it computes the barycentric weights with fewer operations than other methods and has very good numerical stability even when derivatives of high order are involved. We give a partial explanation of its numerical stability., Comment: 17 pages

Let $z_{1},z_{2},...,z_{N}$ be a sequence of distinct grid points. A finite difference formula approximates the $m$-th derivative $f^{(m)}(0)$ as $\sum w_{k}f(z_{k})$, with $w_{k}$ being the weights. We derive an algorithm for finding the weights $w_{k}$ which is an improvement of an algorithm of Fornberg (\emph{Mathematics of Computation}, vol. 51 (1988), p. 699-706). This algorithm uses fewer arithmetic operations than that of Fornberg by a factor of $4/(5m+5)$ while being equally accurate. The algorithm that we derive computes finite difference weights accurately even when $m$, the order of the derivative, is as high as 16. In addition, the algorithm generalizes easily to the efficient computation of spectral differentiation matrices. The order of accuracy of the finite difference formula for $f^{(m)}(0)$ with grid points $hz_{k}$, $1\leq k\leq N$, is typically $\mathcal{O}(h^{N-m})$. However, the most commonly used finite difference formulas have an order of accuracy that is higher than the typical. For instance, the centered difference approximation $(f(h)-2f(0)+f(-h))/h^{2}$ to $f"(0)$ has an order of accuracy equal to 2 not 1. Even unsymmetric finite difference formulas can exhibit such superconvergence or boosted order of accuracy, as shown by the explicit algebraic condition that we derive. If the grid points are real, we prove a basic result stating that the order of accuracy can never be boosted by more than 1., Comment: 23 pages