Re: [Phys-L] Curve Fitting

["Todd K. Pedlar" <todd.pedlar@luther.edu>]

The problem is that the "user-friendly" packages that are available
are black boxes that can be
(nearly) worse useless in terms of the students' actually grasping
what's going on, if they
haven't been instructed in the basics of curve fitting.   The same
phenomenon that we see with
students who can't distinguish between sine, cosine and tangent, or
what to do with an inverse sine
because they have only used their suped-up TI-XYZn graphinc
calculators is happening with physics
students whose experience with curve fitting is limited to using the
black box.  So... I'd fully agree with
the statement to which you're responding, Jim - it really is important
to teach students what it is that a
curve fitting program is trying to minimize, and how it's done in basic terms.

Todd

On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 12:22 PM, Jim Deane <jim.deane@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I mention it in this forum because anybody who wants to do physics needs
> > to be proficient with least-squares fitting.
>
> Hmm.  Do you think this holds true even with the extensive user-friendly
> curve-fitting software packages available now?
>
> I can understand needing to understand how it is done, but I don't know
> that proficiency is required any longer.
>
> Jim
>
>
> --
> -- --- ----- ------- -----------
> James K. Deane
> jim.deane@gmail.com
> -- ------- - -------- -- --------
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-- 
Todd K. Pedlar
Associate Professor of Physics
Luther College, Decorah, IA
todd.pedlar@luther.edu
or pedlto01@luther.edu