As an example, consider a spline function of degree \( k=1 \) defined as follows $$ s(x)=\begin{bmatrix} s_0(x)=a_0x+b_0 & x\in [x_0, x_1) \\ s_1(x)=a_1x+b_1 & x\in [x_1, x_2) \\ \dots & \dots \\ s_{n-1}(x)=a_{n-1}x+b_{n-1} & x\in [x_{n-1}, x_n] \end{bmatrix}. $$ In this case the polynomial consists of series of straight lines connected to each other at every endpoint. The number of continuous derivatives is then \( k-1=0 \), as expected when we deal with straight lines. Such a polynomial is quite easy to construct given \( n+1 \) points \( x_0, x_1, \dots x_n \) and their corresponding function values.