Divided difference(Newton metod)

I have to calculate divided differences, for vector x and vector y(which is function value of vector x). Divided difference is get when substracting two consecutive y elements, and then dividing that difference with two consecutive x elements. My function has to return vector that consists only of first elements of each divided difference. Here is my code, but not working.(So if we have vector x=[x1, x2, x3, ..., xn] this function has to return vector [f[x1], f[x1,x2],f[x1,x2,x3],...,f[x1,x2,...,xn]].

function div = evalDiv(x,y)
difference = y;
for j=2:length(y)
    temp = difference;
    for i=j:length(y)
        difference(i) = (temp(i)-temp(i-1))/(x(i)-x(i-(j-1));
    end
end
div = difference;
end
test = evalDiv([ 1 2 3 4],[5 6 7 8]);

[Sargondjani]

It is not clear what you want to me. You should provide a better formula for what this is supposed to be:

(temp(i)-temp(i-1))/(x(i)-x(i-(j-1));

Also I am not sure you intend to overwrite the values in 'difference'

[Ds31]

Yes, I'm overwriting it, and on the end with that I will get only first element of each divided difference, that is what I need to return. But not sure why it is not printing anything

Answer 1

[Jan]

There was a missing closing parenthesis. The trailing esmivolon suppresses the output. If you omit it, this is displayed:

test = evalDiv([ 1 2 3 4],[5 6 7 8])

test = 1×4

5 1 0 0

function difference = evalDiv(x,y)
difference = y;
for j=2:length(y)
    temp = difference;
    for i=j:length(y)
        difference(i) = (temp(i) - temp(i-1)) / (x(i) - x(i-(j-1)));
        %                                               missing:  ^         
    end
end
end