I'm a professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina Asheville. I've also done a fair amount of consulting work over the years focusing on scientific and data visualization.
I'm happy to be part of the first Observable Ambassador's cohort.
You mean for the speed? I'm using a symmetric difference quotient to approximate the speed which results in the endpoints being lopped off. I suppose that an appropriate one-sided difference quotient could be used at either endpoint but it doesn't seem too important really.
I meant for both. If you look at easeBack you can see that both speed and position are plotting points for x<0 and x>1.
But I might be misunderstanding what x represents, considering that the sample points aren't evenly spaced.
I didn't even notice that! But, yes, you're right of course. The code I based this on used both an ease and a tween, which (I think) interfered with one another. I've modified it to use just an ease to remove that interference. I also changed it so that the position functions are simply extracted from the 'x' attribute of the rectangle.
I don't think there's any reason that the sample points need be evenly spaced. On the contrary, my impression is that the objective is to capture the actual observed position and speed.