A Bound on the Approximation Order of Surface Splines

The functions φ _m :=|.| ^2m-d if d is odd, and φ _m :=|.| ^2m-d log|.| if d is even, are known as surface splines, and are commonly used in the interpolation or approximation of smooth functions. We show that if one's domain is the unit ball in R ^d , then the approximation order of the translates of φ _m is at most m . This is in contrast to the case when the domain is all of R ^d where it is known that the approximation order is exactly 2m . April 23, 1996. Date revised: May 5, 1997.