polynomial
constructs a polynomial from its coefficients,
i.e., p[1:k]
specifies the polynomial
$$p_1 + p_2 x + p_3 x^2 + \dots + p_k x^{k-1}.$$
Internally, polynomials are simply numeric coefficient vectors of
class "polynomial"
. Several useful methods are available for
this class, such as coercion to character (as.character()
) and
function (as.function.polynomial
), extraction of
the coefficients (coef()
), printing (using as.character
),
plotting (plot.polynomial
), and computing sums and
products of arbitrarily many polynomials.
as.polynomial
tries to coerce its arguments to a polynomial.
is.polynomial
tests whether its argument is a polynomial (in
the sense that it has class "polynomial"
.