Polynomial curve fitting using vandermonde determinant.

Abstract

Matrices whose rows (or columns) consists of monomials of sequential powers are called Vandermonde matrices and can be used to describe several useful concepts and have properties that can be helpful for solving many kinds of problems. In this report we will discuss this matrix and some of its properties as well as a generalization of it and how it can be applied to polynomial curve fitting. Demonstration of how to generate a polynomial curve fit is shown. The method used here is the least squares method where the Vandermonde determinant is used to fit an n-degree polynomial to a given data set.