MATLAB: Polynomial equation not giving expected result

equationMATLABplotpolyfitpolyval

I have a set of X axis values that are known moisture content numbers. These values give me the Y axis values in a microcontroller as shown below.
MContent = [1.278096078 22.26039162 31.88752617 40.4470463 45.821662 51.19483315 54.14512732 58.15256688 62.08950419 65.25710918 67.5910596 69.40480782 71.08289411 73.09132161];
BitValue = [1020 960 862 657 440 380 341 193 193 186 179 112 106 85];
When plotting this I will get the following output.
I wanted to obtain a polynomial equation that will fit this line. Therefore I created a 5th order polynomial as shown below.
p5 = polyfit(MContent, BitValue, 5);
format long g
disp(p5)
pp5 = polyval(p5, MContent);
hold on
plot(MContent, pp5, '-p')
Which gives this output.
This line is a satisfactory fit and I intended to use the equation obtained from this to get bit values when I add the moisture content into the 'x' value. To get this polynomial equation I used the following command.
p5 = polyfit(MContent, BitValue, 5);
format long g
disp(p5)
Which gives me
Columns 1 through 4
      -1.3759358768261e-05       0.00276912138617569        -0.193482771635317          5.27065703595948
  Columns 5 through 6
         -53.9134842525771           1080.5582927381
Ignoring the x^5 value, as it is too small, I will use the rest and get the following equation.
yAxis = (0.00276912138617569*(MContent.^4))-(0.193482771635317*(MContent.^3))+(5.27065703595948*(MContent.^2))-(53.9134842525771*(MContent.^1))+(1080.5582927381*(MContent.^0));
But when I try to plot
figure;plot(MContent, yAxis, '-x');
I get the folllowing plot
Which is no where near to the original MContent to BitValue plot. I would like to know why, and how I can get an equation that will fit my original 'MContent' to 'BitValue' plot.
The full code is shown below for reference.
close all
MContent = [1.278096078 22.26039162 31.88752617 40.4470463 45.821662 51.19483315 54.14512732 58.15256688 62.08950419 65.25710918 67.5910596 69.40480782 71.08289411 73.09132161];
BitValue = [1020 960 862 657 440 380 341 193 193 186 179 112 106 85];
plot(MContent, BitValue, ':s', 'MarkerSize', 6, 'MarkerFaceColor', 'b')
title('MContent to bit value from 12th March 2019')
xlabel('Moisture Content (%)')
ylabel('Bit value (bits)')
p5 = polyfit(MContent, BitValue, 5);
format long g
disp(p5)
pp5 = polyval(p5, MContent);
hold on
plot(MContent, pp5, '-p')
legend('M.C. (original)', '5th degree polynomial', 'Location', 'NorthEast')
hold off
yAxis = (0.00276912138617569*(MContent.^4))-(0.193482771635317*(MContent.^3))+(5.27065703595948*(MContent.^2))-(53.9134842525771*(MContent.^1))+(1080.5582927381*(MContent.^0));
figure;plot(MContent, yAxis, '-x');

Best Answer

Just because the coefficient is small doesn't mean it isn't important...it is, after all the coefficient of x^5 and 75^5 = 2.3730e+09 so a factor of 10E-5 on the coefficent is still a 10E4 contribution so you can't just ignore it.
b=polyfit(MContent, BitValue,5);
plot(MContent,BitValue,'bs','MarkerFaceColor','b')
hold on
xh=0:75;
yh4=polyval(b(2:end),0:75);                  % evaluate w/o x^5 term
h4=plot(xh,yh4,'b-');
yh5Only=polyval([b(1) zeros(1,5)],xh);       % and now just that term...
h5O=plot(xh,yh5Only,'r-');
yHat=polyval(b,xh);                          % and the real polynomial...
max(abs(yHat-(yh4+yh5Only)))                 % and that leads to same as adding the x^5 term
ans =
   1.5916e-11
plot(xh,(yhat),'g-')                         % so plot what the real answer is, too...
Above leads to the above plot which clearly illustrates why "you can't DO that!" and expect reasonable results.
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