IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ajagec/v46y1964i3p662-672..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Curve Fitting to Step Functions

Author

Listed:
  • Oscar R. Burt

Abstract

The methods presented in this paper provide an improved technique for fitting a continuous function to discontinuous step functions so often evolving from empirical studies such as estimation of demand and supply functions by linear programming. Curve fitting to step functions is analyzed using the criterion of minimizaton of the integral of squared distances between the curve being fitted and a step function. The criterion is a limiting form of least squares fit where all points on the step function are treated as "observations." Derivations are given for equations specifying the minimum integral fit for polynomials, a criterion of fit analogous to the coefficient of multiple determination in least squares fitting, and the analogue of the standard error of estimate in least squares.

Suggested Citation

  • Oscar R. Burt, 1964. "Curve Fitting to Step Functions," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 46(3), pages 662-672.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:46:y:1964:i:3:p:662-672.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/1236450
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ogunfowora, Olabisi, 1972. "Derived resource demand, product supply and farm policy in the North Central State of Nigeria," ISU General Staff Papers 197201010800006945, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:46:y:1964:i:3:p:662-672.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.