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18 Orthogonal PolynomialsComputation

§18.40 Methods of Computation

Orthogonal polynomials can be computed from their explicit polynomial form by Horner’s scheme (§1.11(i)). Usually, however, other methods are more efficient, especially the numerical solution of difference equations (§3.6) and the application of uniform asymptotic expansions (when available) for OP’s of large degree.

However, for applications in which the OP’s appear only as terms in series expansions (compare §18.18(i)) the need to compute them can be avoided altogether by use instead of Clenshaw’s algorithm (§3.11(ii)) and its straightforward generalization to OP’s other than Chebyshev. For further information see Clenshaw (1955), Gautschi (2004, §§2.1, 8.1), and Mason and Handscomb (2003, §2.4).