3D curvefitting

Question

I have discrete regular grid of a,b points and their corresponding c values and I interpolate it further to get a smooth curve. Now from interpolat

Answer 1

This sounds like more of a philosophical question than specific implementation, specifically to bit - "how does one find a formula that fits a set of data to the best advantage?" In my experience that is a choice you have to make depending on what you're trying to achieve.

What defines "best" for you? For a data fitting problem you can keep adding more and more polynomial coefficients and making a better R^2 value... but will eventually "over fit" the data. A downside of high order polynomials is behavior outside the bounds of the sample data which you've used to fit your response surface - it can quickly go off in some wild direction which may not be appropriate for whatever it is you're trying to model.

Do you have insight into the physical behavior of the system / data you're fitting? That can be used as a basis for what set of equations to use to create a math model. My recommendation would be to use the most economical (simple) model you can get away with.