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Re: Find the center!

• To: mathgroup at christensen.cybernetics.net
• Subject: [mg1164] Re: Find the center!
• From: Jonathan.Rice at cs.tcd.ie (Jonathan Rice)
• Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 02:33:24 -0400
• Organization: TCD, Computer Science

In article <3p652m$kb1 at news0.cybernetics.net>  
wagner at bullwinkle.cs.Colorado.EDU (Dave Wagner) writes:
> In article <3p1dtm$n2n at news0.cybernetics.net>,
> Gottfried Mayer-Kress  <gmk at pegasos.ccsr.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> >
> >There are a bunch of points in 3-space and they are supposed to be 
> >scattered around the surface of a sphere. You want to find the
> >center of the sphere and the radius.
> >
> >NB: The data are noisy (about 2% of the radius) and only cover a patch 
> >on the sphere.
> >
> >I think I have a reasonable solution, but maybe someone knows of some 
> >real elegant method?
> 
> There were several approaches to this problem in The Mathematica Journal
> a couple of years ago, in several different issues.  They probably were
> in Paul Abbott's "Tricks of the Trade" column.
> 
> 		Dave Wagner

You could also check out "An Efficient Bounding Sphere" by Jack Ritter in  
_Graphics_Gems_, ed. Andrew Glassner, Academic Press, 1990.  This  
algorithm is for general point sets in 3D.

-- Jonathan Rice