Gregory type quadrature based on quadratic nodal spline interpolation

Summary. Using a method based on quadratic nodal spline interpolation, we define a quadrature rule with respect to arbitrary nodes, and which in the case of uniformly spaced nodes corresponds to the Gregory rule of order two, i.e. the Lacroix rule, which is an important example of a trapezoidal rule with endpoint corrections. The resulting weights are explicitly calculated, and Peano kernel techniques are then employed to establish error bounds in which the associated error constants are shown to grow at most linearly with respect to the mesh ratio parameter. Specializing these error estimates to the case of uniform nodes, we deduce non-optimal order error constants for the Lacroix rule, which are significantly smaller than those calculated by cruder methods in previous work, and which are shown here to compare favourably with the corresponding error constants for the Simpson rule. Received July 27, 1998/ Revised version received February 22, 1999 / Published online January 27, 2000