Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!well!gors
From: gors@well.UUCP (Gordon Stewart)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Fitting a Circle to a Set of Points
Keywords: Simple-minded approach
Message-ID: <12303@well.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jun 89 00:27:33 GMT
Distribution: comp
Lines: 17


I proposed this to Chris Finn, but he didn't seem to like it much.

Consider the following (simple-minded) solution, which does not blow
up in the case of a "bad" set of points, can't generate any floating
point errors, and generally provides "good" results.  The goodness can
be quantified after the fact, and for the application I envision --
fitting a circle to a set of hand-drawn points --  is plenty good enuf:

Choose the barycenter of the set of points as the center of the circle;
Choose the mean distance from the barycenter to be the radius.


-- 
	
	Michael Sierchio (en guise de Gordon Stewart)
	{pacbell, hoptoad, pyramid, hplabs}!well!gors	gors@well.UUCP