Conversion of an expression to function yields Tag Plus in ... is Protected error

Question

I'm trying to implement polynomial interpolation. My current implementation involves generating an expression that is the final equation that will be plotted. While plotting the function itself works fine, I also want to ListPlot the interpolation points (which will eventually be tuples stored in variable dots).

To achieve this, I attempted to do polyFunc[x_]=polyFunc which returns a Tag Plus in [expression] is Protected.

As an attempt to fix this, I also tried to store the expression in an auxiliary variable, polyFuncAux:

polyFuncAux[x_] = polyFunc

This returns no errors but yields the wrong answer. The x in the expression isn't substituted for the input value and is instead, appended to the end of the expression.

Ex:

Input: polyFuncAux[0] Output: [expression][0]

polyInterp[func_, interval_, degree_] :=
  Module[{xMatrix, yMatrix, polyFunc, polyFuncAux, newFunc, coeff, 
    line, dots},
   xMatrix = 
    Table[If[i == 0 && j == 0, 1, i^j], {i, interval[[1]], 
      interval[[2]], Abs[interval[[2]] - interval[[1]]]/degree}, {j, 
      0, degree}];
   xMatrix = Inverse[xMatrix];

   yMatrix = 
    Table[func[i], {i, interval[[1]], interval[[2]], 
      Abs[interval[[2]] - interval[[1]]]/degree}];

   coeff = xMatrix . yMatrix;

   polyFunc = Table[x^i, {i, 0, degree}];
   polyFunc = polyFunc*coeff;
   polyFunc = Total[polyFunc];
   polyFunc[x_] = polyFunc;

   (*
   line=Plot[{newFunc,func[x]},{x,interval[[1]],interval[[2]]},
   PlotStyle->{{Red,Thickness[0.006]},{Blue,Dashed}}];
   Show[line]
   *)
   ];
```

Answer 1

The relevant part of your code appears to be:

degree = 3;
polyFunc = Total[Table[x^i, {i, 0, degree}]];

Now you want to make polyFunc into an actual function. Try:

poly[x_] := Evaluate[polyFunc]

Now you can query poly for values like poly[1] or poly[2].