# MATLAB: What is the best fit for a set of data

best fit equationfit

I have data which represents Dynamic viscosity of a fluid as a function of Temperature. I need a best fit equation like : Dynamic viscosity = (a*Temperature^b) – c. where a, b and c are constant .can any one give the best fit equation.

• I think you need to spend some time learning about modeling. Do some reading. Lots of stuff online to be found. You would want to consider at some point if a regression style model is really appropriate, or if a simple spline interpolation would be satisfactory. Do you just want a pretty plot? Do you want something you can interpolate with, just to predict viscosity for different temperatures? So you should spend some time deciding what you want, what you need, what are your long term goals in the task at hand.
Anyway, alot of modeling ends up being common sense. So first, plot your data. Always plot everything. A simple rule that will serve you greatly in the future.
plot(T,V,'.'), grid on
Here, I would first recognize that your data varies by several orders of magnitude in Viscosity, but temperature is pretty well-behaved. I would ask questions like is this measured data? What do you expect about the noise structure in your data? Note that any traditional fiit using least squares in the residuals of viscosity will be STRONGLY influenced by only those first few points. Again, this is something you need to learn about modeling. But my point is that IF we look at the data,
[T,V]ans =          273        0.143          283       0.0738          293       0.0416          303       0.0252          313       0.0163          323       0.0111          333      0.00793          343      0.00589          353      0.00452          363      0.00356          373      0.00288          383      0.00238          393        0.002          403      0.00171          413      0.00148          423      0.00129          433      0.00114          443      0.00102          453     0.000913          463     0.000825          473     0.000749          483     0.000683          493     0.000625          503     0.000574          513     0.000528          523     0.000488          533     0.000451          543     0.000418          553     0.000387          563      0.00036          573     0.000334          583     0.000311          593     0.000289
I would want my curve to fit well down in that tail. Essentially, ypu want to consider if any proportional (relative) errors are appropriate. Most of the time, when your data varies by many orders of magnitude, that is what you will want to see. If so, then it makes complete sense to log the y variable, thus here we would work in terms of log(viscosity). Plot that. Look at it. Think about the curve you see.
semilogy(T,V,'.')grid on
So here we see a relationship that is far more well-behaved. I don't see much noise in the data. So a simple interpolation would do well here. In fact, you need to consider if it may well be the best choice, since any simple model will have considerable lack of fit! So again, what do you need out of this in the end? A pretty picture? A function that you can write down, even if it misses passing through the data very well? What do you need?
Next, IF you would consider a simple model like
viscosity = A*temp^B
then a log-log plot would give a straight line fit. (Note that I ignored for the moment the constant offset term C that you posed.)
loglog(T,V,'.'), grid on
So it gave us something closer to a straight line. In fact, a little play would convince you that no value of C will make this curve a straight line. That is, there is no value of C such that
loglog(T,V - C ,'.')
would yield something close to a straight line. This is something you can prove rather easily. (Think about it.)
So the model you posed, of
viscosity = A*temp^B + C
is simply not a good choice.(You actually had it where you subtracted C, but that is simply a sign chance on the value of C: so completely irrelevant.)
loglog(T - 250,V,'.'), grid on
ft = fittype('log(A) + log(temp - t0)*B','independent','temp','coefficients',{'A','B','t0'})     General model:     ft(A,B,t0,temp) = log(A) + log(temp - t0)*B     mdl = fit(T,log(V),ft,'start',[100,-1,250])mdl =      General model:     mdl(temp) = log(A) + log(temp - t0)*B     Coefficients (with 95% confidence bounds):       A =       234.9  (123.2, 346.5)       B =      -2.339  (-2.423, -2.255)       t0 =       250.6  (247.8, 253.5)       plot(mdl)hold onplot(T,log(V),'o')grid onxlabel 'Temp, degrees K'ylabel 'log(viscosity)'