Fit points to curve with zero slope

Hi

I have to fit a set of coordinates (two points) to a linear slope, however, in one case I know the slope is 0. I'm using polyfit.

polyfit([x1 x2], [y1 y2], 1)

This returns a slope coefficient of -263.0023e-018.

I know the slope for this specific case is 0, but I want to make my script able to handle changes to input, which is why I don't want to manually change the slope coefficient. While e-018 might be accurate enough for the task at hand, I'd like to be able to do it correctly.

So how do I fit two points to a linear curve where the slope is 0?

Answer 1

[Torsten]

The polynomial is given by

p = (sum_{i=1}^{n} yi) / n

where

(x1,y1), (x2,y2), ..., (xn,yn)

are the given data points.

In your case:

p = (y1+y2)/2

Best wishes

Torsten.