Asymptotic error estimates for quintic spline-on-spline interpolation (Q1114097)

The error of spline-on-spline techniques for approximating the second derivative of real-valued functions on [0,1] from its values at equidistant knots \(0=x_ 0<x_ 1<...<x_ n=1\) is investigated. Let a sufficiently smooth function \(f: [0,1]\to {\mathbb{R}}\) be given. The following spline-on-spline method is considered. Let s be a quintic spline interpolation of f, i.e. \(s(x_ i)=f(x_ i)\), \(i=0,...,n\), and, in addition, let \(\bar s\) be a quintic spline interpolation of the derivative of the spline s, i.e. \(\bar s(x_ i)=s'(x_ i)\), \(i=0,...,n\). It is shown that for the second derivative of f the asymptotic error expansions \(f''(x_ i)-s''(x_ i)=-(h^ 4/720)f^{(6)}(x_ i)+O(h^ 6)\) and \(f''(x_ i)-\bar s'(x_ i)=- (h^ 6/2520)f^{(8)}(x_ i)+O(h^ 8),\) \(i=1,...,n-1\), where \(h=1/n\), hold if the splines s and \(\bar s\) satisfy appropriate boundary conditions. In addition, some numerical results are given. The cubic case was investigated earlier in a joint paper of the author and R. Usmani.