Newton-Thiele's rational interpolants

It is well known that Newton's interpolation polynomial is based on divided differences which produce useful intermediate results and allow one to compute the polynomial recursively. Thiele's interpolating continued fraction is aimed at building a rational function which interpolates the given support points. It is interesting to notice that Newton's interpolation polynomials and Thiele's interpolating continued fractions can be incorporated in tensor‐product‐like manner to yield four kinds of bivariate interpolation schemes. Among them are classical bivariate Newton's interpolation polynomials which are purely linear interpolants, branched continued fractions which are purely nonlinear interpolants and have been studied by Chaffy, Cuyt and Verdonk, Kuchminska, Siemaszko and many other authors, and Thiele-Newton's bivariate interpolating continued fractions which are investigated in another paper by one of the authors. In this paper, emphasis is put on the study of Newton-Thiele's bivariate rational interpolants. By introducing so‐called blending differences which look partially like divided differences and partially like inverse differences, we give a recursive algorithm accompanied with a numerical example. Moreover, we bring out the error estimation and discuss the limiting case. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.