Greville abscissa 2026-10-06
For an order- B-spline with , its Greville abscissa is the arithmetic mean of its interior knots. These are precisely the coefficients reproducing the linear function in the monomial B-spline coefficients formula. The irregular plural is Greville abscissae.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 69 5 b Solution 2026-10-06
Set and let be the elementary symmetric polynomial of degree in the interior knots, with . Expand the Marsden identity in powers of . The coefficient of on the left is ; that coefficient in is . Comparing and cancelling the sign proves the monomial B-spline coefficients:For this gives partition of unity on the basic interval. For it gives the Greville abscissae, the arithmetic means of the interior knots. For the top degree it gives their product. When , only occurs and the empty symmetric polynomial is one.