Spline

Definitions

1. A long, thin piece of metal or wood.
2. A strip of wood or other material inserted into grooves in each of two pieces of wood to provide additional surface for gluing.
3. A flexible strip of metal or other material, that may be bent into a curve and used in a similar manner to a ruler to draw smooth curves between points.
4. Any of a number of smooth curves used to join points.
5. A ridge or tooth on a drive shaft that meshes with a corresponding groove in a mating piece and transfers torque to it, maintaining the angular correspondence between the pieces; either the ridge or the groove, as part of a set of both (splines); the whole set of ridges and grooves.
6. A rectangular piece that fits grooves like key seats in a hub and a shaft, so that while the one may slide endwise on the other, both must revolve together.

Equivalents

Examples

“However, it should be possible to give⟳ more sophisticated spherical spline curves based on the de Castaljau method that are computed using multiple slerps between pairs of points and which work⟳ well for arbitrary knot positions (indeed, knot insertion methods for spline curves should suffice for this, cf Farin [1993])”

“These conditions provide⟳ a framework which encompasses some notable approximation kernels including splines, so-called cardinal functions, and many radial basis functions such as the Gaussians and general multiquadrics.”

“Near-synonym: feather”

CEFR level