English

Fitting circles to scattered data: parameter estimates have no moments

Statistics Theory 2009-07-03 v1 Statistics Theory

Abstract

We study a nonlinear regression problem of fitting a circle (or a circular arc) to scattered data. We prove that under any standard assumptions on the statistical distribution of errors that are commonly adopted in the literature, the estimates of the circle center and radius have infinite moments. We also discuss methodological implications of this fact.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0907.0429,
  title  = {Fitting circles to scattered data: parameter estimates have no moments},
  author = {N. Chernov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0907.0429},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

14 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:20:38.180Z