Wilkinson's polynomial

In numerical analysis, Wilkinson's polynomial is a specific polynomial which was used by James H. Wilkinson in 1963 to illustrate a difficulty when finding the root of a polynomial: the location of the roots can be very sensitive to perturbations in the coefficients of the polynomial.

Plot of Wilkinson's polynomial

Plot of ${\displaystyle \operatorname {sgn}(w(x))\ln(1+|w(x)|)}$

The polynomial is

Sometimes, the term Wilkinson's polynomial is also used to refer to some other polynomials appearing in Wilkinson's discussion.