EGN 3420

Project 4 Newton Divided Difference Interpolation

Sp 07

The following table contains vehicle stopping distances as a function of speed. i 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 vi (mph) 0 25 35 45 55 65 75 Di (ft) 0 58 92 145 213 290 400

a) Use MATLAB to fit a 6th order Newton Divided Difference Interpolating Polynomial through the data points, i.e. D6 (v) = b0 + b1 (v - v0 ) + b2 (v - v0 )(v - v1 ) + .... + b6 (v - v0 )(v - v1 )(v - v5 ) The program must calculate and output all of the finite differences, i.e. f (v0 ), f [v1 , v0 ], f [v2 , v1 ],......, f [v6 , v5 , v4 , v3 , v2 , v1 , v0 ] and label those which are equal to the coefficients b0 , b1 ,..., b6 . b) Plot the data points (vi , Di ), i = 0,1,..., 6 and the Newton Divided Difference Interpolating Polynomial on the same graph. c) Use the results to interpolate the stopping distances for the speeds in the table below. v (mph) 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Estimate of D (ft)

d) Estimate the error in the interpolated stopping distance from a speed of 60 mph by including the additional data point (80,464) to obtain the 7 th order polynomial D7 (v). Use D7 (60) D6 (60) as the estimated error.