🚀 go-pugleaf

I know there are lots of s/w packages specifically for curve fitting,
and I could whip up a least squares fit algorithm in C and use it, but
what I want to do should be easy to do from Maple, I think, if I knew
how.

I want to fit a set of x,y datapoints to a 2nd order polynomial.
There's the interp function that will fit n datapoints to an n-1th
degree polynomial, but I can't see how to tell it to fit to a 2nd
order equation except by just giving 3 datapoints. :-(

If I could extract the code from the interp routine, it would probably
be easy to change it to accept the degree as a parameter.

I looked at regress from the stats package, but it didn't seem very
useful for this. Maybe it is, but I don't understand the input data
formats?

Is interp actually useful for curve fitting, or is it just a freebie
that's there because it was needed internally when drawing pretty
pictures? 

Comments? Thanks.



-- 
# Hugh D. Gamble, NTT Systems Inc. (at DCIEM (416) 635-2156) Std. Disclaimers #
# hugh@dciem.dciem.dnd.ca, hugh@kink.PhaedraV.On.Ca                           #
# "automata da vida, honey" - CA Butterfly                                    #