--- Phil Steitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 0. To help debug the SplineInterpolater (PR #28019 et al), I need to
> expose the coefficients in o.a.c.m.analysis.Polynomial as a read-only
> property (returning an array copy). Any objections to adding this?
+1 if you do it by adding a package-level-accessible (i.e., no access modifier
keyword; the JUnit test would be able to access it by being in the same
package) getter method -- which sounds like what you're proposing.
> While reviewing the code, I also noticed that the current impl uses
> "naive" evaluation (using Math.pow, etc.). I would like to change this to
> use Horner's Method. Here is what I have ready to commit:
>
> 1. Add protected static double evaluate(double[] coefficients, double
> argument) implementing Horner to get the function value; and change
> value(double) to just call this.
>
> 2. Add protected static double[] differentiate(double[] coefficients) to
> return the coefficients of the derivative of the polynomial with
> coefficients equal to the actual parameter. Then change
> firstDerivative(x) to just return
> evaluate(differentiate(coefficients), x). Similar for secondDerivative.
> I could adapt Horner for the derivatives, but that seems messy to me and
> the slight memory cost to create the temp arrays seems worth it.
>
> 3. I would also like to add
> public PolynomialFunction derivative() {
> return new PolynomialFunction(differentiate(coefficients));
> }
>
> Any objections to this?
+1, these sound reasonable.
> Interestingly, while Horner's method should give better numerics, it
> actually fails to get within 1E-15 for one of the quintic test cases,
> performing worse than the "naive" impl. The error is in the 16th
> significant digit, which is not surprising. I would like to change the
> tolerance to 1E-12 (current tests actually succeed at 1E-14).
>
> Phil
I wonder why that is? Does Math.pow() use higher-than-double precision and
then cast down to double? I think we should consider carefully what is implied
by the fact that Horner's method has worse precision. Also, I would in
principle like to leave the tolerance as tight as possible, 1E-14 in this case.
Al
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