Computing with barycentric polynomials (Q1181866)

In this informal survey the author sketches some of the remarkable stability properties of the representation of polynomials under the barycentric form and tries to convince the reader that, under certain simple conditions, it is always preferable to the familiar form using the power basis. The barycentric form, using the well-known Bernstein basis functions, was introduced and used in the field of computer-aided geometric design, which deals with the computer representation and manipulation of shape information for engineering purposes. The present paper consists of the following sections: (1) Introduction; (2) Condition numbers; (3) Historical background; (4) Barycentric versus power forms; (5) Subdivision; (6) Computing with barycentric forms.