C-extension in Python -- returning results

[Jive Dadson]

Have you tested this thing in a stand-alone C program on the same data
that's getting the failure under Python?  I suspect your C code is
actually generating an indeterminant result.  You can pepper your C code
with 

      assert(_finite(number));

That will assert false if "number" is not valid (NAN, INF, IND, or
whatever).

Just skimming over the C code, it appears that you are using Gaussian
elimination or some such technique.  That probably won't get it. 
Equations for fitting data to a polynomial are frequenlty
ill-conditioned.  To have a fighting chance numerically, you probably
need to use singular value decomposition or some other more robust
technique.  But even at that, the polynomial you finally get might be
alarmingly wild - not interpolating well at all.  I suggest you might
want to re-think the model.  Why a polynomial?  Why specifically five
degrees?  Is there some  theoretical reason?  You might consider using
some less parametrical approach like a neural network trained with
weight decay.  Talk to the folks in sci.math.num-analysis.  Also, the
folks in sci.stat.math are good at this sort of thing.

Jive