Exponential fitting with lsquares



> FWIW I find the following formulation seems to yield a
> sensible result with Maxima built from CVS (didn't try it
> on any released version).

I have checked the procedure suggested by Robert with the following
setting:

Maxima version: 5.18.1
Maxima build date: 0:30 5/23/2009
host type: i686-pc-linux-gnu
lisp-implementation-type: CLISP
lisp-implementation-version: 2.41 (2006-10-13) (built 3380066971)
(memory 3452045430)

(please, note that my build of CLISP is really old). The error still
persists:

(%i1) M : matrix
([1900, 75.995],
 [1910, 91.972],
 [1920, 105.711],
 [1930, 123.203],
 [1940, 131.669],
 [1950, 150.697],
 [1960, 179.323],
 [1970, 203.212],
 [1980, 226.505],
 [1990, 249.633],
 [2000, 281.422]);
(%i2) load (lsquares);
(%i3) mse : lsquares_mse (M, [x, y], y = a * exp(b*(x - 1950)));
(%i4) est : lsquares_estimates_approximate (mse, [a, b], initial=[100,0.01]); *************************************************
  N=    2   NUMBER OF CORRECTIONS=25
       INITIAL VALUES
 F=  2.443742861233416D+42   GNORM=  2.444231559933393D+44
*************************************************
   I  NFN     FUNC                    GNORM                   STEPLENGTH
Maxima encountered a Lisp error:
 
NTH: T is not a list
Automatically continuing.
To reenable the Lisp debugger set *debugger-hook* to nil.

As Leo noted there is a workaround for this, so it is not that bad, but
I'm glad to hear that it can be fixed.
Best regards,
___________________________________
Jos? Antonio Vallejo Rodr?guez
Departamento de Matem?ticas
Facultad de Ciencias UASLP
Lat. Av. Salvador Nava s/n
78290 San Luis Potos? (M?xico)
http://galia.fc.uaslp.mx/~jvallejo/
email: jvallejo at fciencias.uaslp.mx
___________________________________