CaseStudyForm
Title DataFitting
DateSubmitted 19 Feb 2008
CaseStudyType DIYCaseStudy
OperationsResearchTopics NonlinearProgramming
ApplicationAreas Data Analysis
ProblemDescription Also known as The Least Squares Problem

When modelling data, scientists often want to fit an analytical model to their experimental data. In this case an experiment has provided some $(x, y)$-coordinates that have a growth curve shape, i.e., initially $y$ increases quickly with $x$, thens tails off to some maximum value. The scientists in this study have suggested three possible functions to model this behaviour:

  1. $y = f(x) \equiv \displaystyle\frac{1}{a x^2 + b x + c}$
  2. $y = f(x) \equiv a\log(x - b) + c$
  3. $y = f(x) \equiv a\sqrt{x - b} + c$

Given one of the possible functions $f(x)$ and the data points $(x_i, y_i), i=1, \ldots, n$ they want to find $a$, $b$ and $c$ to minimize the squared distance between the data points and the estimates, i.e.,

 \begin{equation*} \min_{a, b, c} \sum_{i=1}^n \left(y_i - f(x_i) \right)^2 \end{equation*}

The scientists have specified the number of data points and their coordinates in an AMPL data file regression.dat.

The scientists want to know which of the suggested functions provides the best fit to the data.

ProblemFormulation The formulation...
ComputationalModel The computational model...
Results The results...
Conclusions In conclusion...
ExtraForExperts

StudentTasks
  1. Write AMPL files regression.mod and regression.run that use regression.dat to solve The Data Fitting Problem. Write a management summary of your solution. Be sure to indicate which of the functions fits the data best.

    What to hand in Your new AMPL files regression.mod and regression.run. Your management summary.

Topic attachments
I Attachment History Action Size Date Who Comment
Unknown file formatdat regression.dat r1 manage 3.7 K 2008-03-26 - 00:35 MichaelOSullivan  
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Topic revision: r10 - 2018-11-23 - TWikiAdminUser
 
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