Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-options-ii-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2012/p/p4/c/solution

The finite sum of truncated cubes is by part (b) and is cubic on each knot interval. For , every term vanishes. For , every truncated power equals its ordinary polynomial, so part (a) applied to gives
It is therefore zero on both exterior intervals. Its regularity makes the endpoint second derivatives zero too, proving naturality.
Evaluation at the five knots gives
For example the three interior values in units of are , , and . At the cancellation is .
For an explicit graph description is
It is symmetric about , increases from zero to its maximum four at the centre, and decreases symmetrically back to zero. It joins the zero tails with zero first and second derivatives.
Figure 1.
A compactly supported natural cubic spline with knot values zero, one, four, one, zero
. The original plot uses the truncated-power formula for h equal to one. The maximum is four at x equal to two; both tails and the first two endpoint derivatives are zero. Details.

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