[SciPy-User] How to fit data with errorbars

[Robert Kern]

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 12:15, Jeremy Conlin <jlconlin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 11:06 AM, Skipper Seabold <jsseabold at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 10:24 AM, Jeremy Conlin <jlconlin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> <snip>
>>> After reading into curve fitting, I realize I know next to nothing
>>> about how this is done.  Can anyone recommend a good book or some sort
>>> of reference to describe curve fitting in general?  I need to
>>> investigate this further.
>>>
>>
>> What is your background?  I find examples that are in terms of things
>> I am intuitively familiar with to be much more helpful, though as you
>> learn more this becomes less important.
>
> I should have given my background.  I have a PhD in engineering where
> my work was in computational algorithms.  However, at the time, I
> didn't need to fit a curve to my data to any known models.  Now that I
> have a job, this becomes necessary so I need to learn it.
>>
>> I found this to be a decent general intro (if you can find it):
>> Introduction to Linear Regression Analysis by Montgomery and Peck
>
> Thanks for that recommendation.  I will get this.

Honestly, I'd recommend staying away from any sources that use the
word "regression". They are perfectly fine sources in general, but
they come from a very different background and have a very different
focus from what engineers need.

Bevington and Robinson's _Data Reduction and Error Analysis for The
Physical Sciences_ is a good, though old, book that has more of a
physics and engineering focus.

http://www.amazon.com/Reduction-Error-Analysis-Physical-Sciences/dp/0079112439

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless
enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as
though it had an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco