Practical Least Squares

Abstract

THERE are already many excellent books on least squares, both theoretical and practical, but there are also many differences between the requirements of one student and another, and this book may well find a place.. Its limitations of aim are clearly stated in the preface, the special object being to provide an elementary course in which practice is obtained first and reasons are supplied later. The body of the book contains, there fore, a description of the customary calculations, with relatively lengthy treatment of conditioned observa tions and triangulation, but with all discussion of pre cision relegated to the end. This is unusual, and the actual method of calculating the standard (mean square) error, working with an assumed base, is not given, although this method is used for calculating the mean itself. Also no direct reference is made to the minimum property of the standard error. The use of the normal law of error is justified in an appendix by Gauss's first proof, but in a course of this sort one might have expected to find more use made of actual sets of data to illustrate in detail the relation between theory and fact. The treatment is attractive and clear, but there are no examples for practice.