Least squares Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun a method of fitting a curve to data points so as to minimize the sum of the squares of the distances of the points from the curve
    method of least squares.

WordNet


Definitions
  1. (Math.), a method of deducing from a number of carefully made yet slightly discordant observations of a phenomenon the most probable values of the unknown quantities. It takes as its fundamental principle that the most probable values are those which make the sum of the squares of the residual errors of the observation a minimum.

Webster 1913