i have a lot of point-sets. all having a x and a y coordinate. what i need is a way in vb.net to find out a polynomial function that describes as closely as possible these points. does anybody have an idea on how to do this?
each set has 18 points!
i have a lot of point-sets. all having a x and a y coordinate. what i need is a way in vb.net to find out a polynomial function that describes as closely as possible these points. does anybody have an idea on how to do this?
each set has 18 points!
It's not a language specific problem, and there's probably no API that can help you solve this directly.
However, the problem can be modeled as solving linear system, with which you could hopefully get some help from some linear algebra library.
Have a look at here.
This is a well-known problem, and there are a number of solutions depending on what you're after. Using Chebyshev polynomials is one popular solution. It all depends on the nature of your points: although you can happily brute-force out a minimal-order fit (seventeenth-order in your case) it'll usually oscillate wildly and probably isn't what you want. The degree of smoothing you need though is problem-dependant.
In Matlab, Mathematica, and even Python there are methods for doing this sort of thing:
You'll probably have to roll your own in VB.net. Start by reading wikipedia; the maths isn't particularly heavy-duty if you just want to implement this stuff.