Prerequisites Any time during a calculus class depending on the level of sophistication which you expect. A day should be set aside to discuss curve fitting before this assignment is given. Expectations Students should have FUN judging each others methods. Be prepared to deal with students who offer trivial solutions without any mathematical foundation. Gives students experience with curve fitting.
Students gain a sense of ownership due to the open nature of the problem.
Fortunately, the idea is quite simple. To understand the Hausdorff distance between two curves, you have to define what you mean by the distance between the curves. This in turn is easier to understand if you first define the distance between a point and a curve. The distance between a point and a curve is the length of the shortest line segment between the point and the curve. While it is easy to describe, the Hausdorff distance is typically hard to compute symbolically.