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Given the data for an experiment:

Velocity: 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10
Force: 0 , 2.9, 14.8, 39.6, 74.3, 119

(One force value listed below one velocity value in a table)

Find an interpolating polynomial $p(t) = a_0 + a_1 t + a_2 t^2 + a_3 t^3 + a_4 t^4 + a_5 t^5$ for these data.

What happens if you try to use a polynomial of degree less than 5?

(This is a MATLAB question, but our class was never taught how to answer this kind of question in the first place)

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    How would I set that up as a matrix? That's all we've really been taught so far.2011-10-04
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    As for actually doing these computations in MATLAB: constructing the Vandermonde matrix and then using the operator ` \ ` is fine, but then there's [`polyfit()`](http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/polyfit.html)...2011-10-05

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