Shape preservation regions for six-dimensional spaces (Q878096)

A basis of a space of functions provides a shape preserving representation for the design of curves from its control polygon if it is normalized and totally positive. Certain spaces admit shape preserving representations only on compact intervals whose length is strictly less than a fixed value. This length is called critical length for design purposes. In this paper the critical length of 6-dimensional subspaces of \( C^1 (I\!\!R) \) containing the functions \( 1 , \cos t, \sin t \) and being invariant under reflections is studied. In particular, the critical length of \[ H_w = \langle 1, \cos t , \sin t , \cosh (wt), \sinh (wt) \rangle \] and \[ T_w = \langle 1, \cos t , \sin t , \cos (wt), \sin (wt) \rangle \] is derived. Further, the authors compare several spaces of functions defined on the same interval and study their shape preserving regions. For that purpose the spaces are transformed into two biparametric families of spaces by a suitable change of variables. The critical length for design can then be related to one of the parameters.