Chopping a Chebyshev Series

Abstract

Chebfun and related software projects for numerical computing with functions are based on the idea that at each step of a computation, a function $f(x)$ defined on an interval $[a,b]$ is "rounded" to a prescribed precision by constructing a Chebyshev series and chopping it at an appropriate point. Designing a chopping algorithm with the right properties proves to be a surprisingly complex and interesting problem. We describe the chopping algorithm introduced in Chebfun Version 5.3 in 2015 after many years of discussion and the considerations that led to this design.