numpy.polynomial — NumPy v2.3 Manual (original) (raw)

A sub-package for efficiently dealing with polynomials.

Within the documentation for this sub-package, a “finite power series,” i.e., a polynomial (also referred to simply as a “series”) is represented by a 1-D numpy array of the polynomial’s coefficients, ordered from lowest order term to highest. For example, array([1,2,3]) representsP_0 + 2*P_1 + 3*P_2, where P_n is the n-th order basis polynomial applicable to the specific module in question, e.g., polynomial (which “wraps” the “standard” basis) or chebyshev. For optimal performance, all operations on polynomials, including evaluation at an argument, are implemented as operations on the coefficients. Additional (module-specific) information can be found in the docstring for the module of interest.

This package provides convenience classes for each of six different kinds of polynomials:

These convenience classes provide a consistent interface for creating, manipulating, and fitting data with polynomials of different bases. The convenience classes are the preferred interface for the polynomialpackage, and are available from the numpy.polynomial namespace. This eliminates the need to navigate to the corresponding submodules, e.g.np.polynomial.Polynomial or np.polynomial.Chebyshev instead ofnp.polynomial.polynomial.Polynomial ornp.polynomial.chebyshev.Chebyshev, respectively. The classes provide a more consistent and concise interface than the type-specific functions defined in the submodules for each type of polynomial. For example, to fit a Chebyshev polynomial with degree 1 to data given by arrays xdata and ydata, thefit class method:

from numpy.polynomial import Chebyshev xdata = [1, 2, 3, 4] ydata = [1, 4, 9, 16] c = Chebyshev.fit(xdata, ydata, deg=1)

is preferred over the chebyshev.chebfit function from thenp.polynomial.chebyshev module:

from numpy.polynomial.chebyshev import chebfit c = chebfit(xdata, ydata, deg=1)

See Using the convenience classes for more details.

Convenience Classes#

The following lists the various constants and methods common to all of the classes representing the various kinds of polynomials. In the following, the term Poly represents any one of the convenience classes (e.g.Polynomial, Chebyshev, Hermite, etc.) while the lowercase p represents an instance of a polynomial class.

Constants#

Creation#

Methods for creating polynomial instances.

Conversion#

Methods for converting a polynomial instance of one kind to another.

Calculus#

Validation#

Misc#

Configuration#