Polynomials

• A truncated Taylor series is just a polynomial, and a computer can handle
• only maths needed are addition and multiplication
• Any continuous function can be approximated uniformly over a finite interval by a polynomial
• Chebyshev polynomial; better then Taylor series in approximating functions
• Legendre polynomial; good way to integrate a function numerically
• use nested form $P(x)=((a_3x+a_2)x^2+a_1x)+a_0$ instead of $P(x)=a_0+a_1x+a_2x^2+a_3x^3$
• since the former has four multiplications and three additions instead of six multiplications and three additions