[net.ai] best-fitting curve for 3 points

BARNARD@SRI-AI.ARPA (07/06/84)

Maybe I'm missing something.  Three points define a unique circle.
Finding the circle given the points is trivial.  What's the problem?

In general, the theory of splines deals with the problem of fitting
a piecewise polynomial to a sequence of points.  For example,
b-splines are piecewise cubics that can be used to connect points
with smooth, continuous curves (i.e., twice-differentiable curves).