In which order does polyfit command display coefficients?
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Hello everyone,
I have a question that arose when reading the polyfit explanation. It says: "p = polyfit(x,y,n) returns the coefficients for a polynomial p(x) of degree n that is a best fit for the data in y. The coefficients in p are in descending powers".
The following example (from the same small article), however, shows that the coefficients are ascending from p1 to pn:
p(x)=p1*xn+p2*xn−1+...+pn*x+pn+1.".
I am confused. If my polyfit output for a first degree polynomial is 1.33 and -4.5, in which order would they appear in the corresponding equation?
Thank you!
[SL: edited to remove some extraneous hyperlinks]
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Accepted Answer
Star Strider
on 16 Apr 2019
The 1.33 value is the slope, and the -4.5 value is the intercept, so they would appear as [1.33 -4.5]. , corresponding to and respectively.
I interpret the coefficients as:
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Star Strider
on 16 Apr 2019
As always, my pleasure!
That is how I would do it, with ‘leftmost’ being the coefficient of the highest-order of the polynomial, and ‘rightmost’ being the constant (intercept) term. The polyval function interprets them this way, so it automatically produces the correct result.
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