I'm currently writing a C++ program where I have vectors of independent and dependent data that I would like to fit to a cubic function. However, I'm having trouble generating a polynomial that can fit my data.
Part of the problem is that I can't use various numerical packages, such as GSL (long story); it's possible that it might even be overkill for my case. I don't need a very generalized solution for least squares fitting. I specifically want to fit my data to a cubic function. I do have access to Sony's vector library, which supports 4x4 matrices and can calculate their inverses, among other things.
While prototyping this in Scilab, I used a function like:
function p = polyfit(x, y, n)
m = length(x);
aa = zeros(m, n+1)
aa(:,1) = ones(m,1)
for k = 2:n+1
aa(:,k) = x.^(k-1)
end
p = aa\y
endfunction
Unfortunately, this doesn't map well to my current environment. The above example needs to support a matrix of M x N+1 dimensions. In my case, that's M x 4, where M depends on how much sample data that I have. There's also the problem of left division. I would need a matrix library that supported the inverse of matrices of arbitrary dimensions.
Is there an algorithm for least squares where I can avoid having to calculate aa\y, or at least limit it to a 4x4 matrix? I suppose that I'm trying to rewrite the above algorithm into a simpler case that works for fitting to a cubic polynomial. I'm not looking for a code solution, but if someone can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.