Curve Fit is a program written for scientists, science students or
anyone who wants to fit user defined functions to a set of data
points. (At present it does not produce nice graphs for presentation.)
I originally wrote it because I wanted to fit some specific equations
to my data. The popular commercial graphics packages allow you to fit
linear, polynomial and logarithmic curves to data, but most packages
don?t let you specify your own equation. However Curve Fit allows you
to fit equations such as y = ax+b+c/x. A trivial but annoying example
is fitting a straight line through the origin. Many popular programs
fit the equation y = ax + b, however they decide what value to use for
b and it isn?t necessarily zero. Curve Fit lets you either constrain b
to zero or simply fit the equation y = ax. There is one good
commercial package that lets you define your own equations but it
doesn?t allow the user to directly manipulate the coefficients or
constrain them to chosen values. Curve Fit is very flexible in this
regard and gives you control over which coefficients will be optimized
and even which mathematical algorithm will be used. Curve Fit can also
be used simply to plot and analyse specific mathematical functions
without necessarily fitting them to any data points.
