Near-interpolation

Summary.  A parametric curve fL ₂ ^(m) (a,b]ℝ ^d ) is a ``near-interpolant' to prescribed data z <sub>ij</sub> ℝ <sup>d</sup> at data sites t <sub>i</sub> a,b] within tolerances 0<ɛ <sub>ij</sub> ≤∞ if |f <sup>(j−1)</sup> (t <sub>i</sub> )−z <sub>ij</sub> |≤ɛ <sub>ij</sub> for i=1:n and j=1:m, and a ``best near-interpolant' if it also minimizes ∫ _a ^b |f ^(m) |². In this paper optimality conditions are derived for these best near-interpolants. Based on these conditions it is shown that the near-interpolants are actually smoothing splines with weights that appear as Lagrange multipliers corresponding to the constraints. The optimality conditions are applied to the computation of near-interpolants in the last sections of the paper. Received September 4, 2001 / Revised version received July 22, 2002 / Published online October 29, 2002 Mathematics Subject Classification (1991): 41A05, 41A15, 41A29